A Yorkshire business set up in October 2016 from a home kitchen has won the Small Business Sunday award from Dragons Den’s Theo Paphitis.
The Bottled Baking Co. was created by 32-year-old full-time dad Greg Fraser, and offers ready-to-bake, hand-crafted cake mixes packaged in glass bottles. Greg had the idea when he was baking cakes with his son and saw a gap in the market for high quality, easy-to-use, ‘complete’ cake mixes.
The business has gone from strength to strength in the few short months since it started, as Greg explains:
“I trialled selling the bottles at Kirkstall Market in Leeds and sold what I expected to sell across two days within the first two hours. I was then contacted by Pride & Produce, a deli local to me, who initially placed an order for 30 bottles. I delivered them at 8.30am one Saturday and by 12pm they’d ordered another 20, and by 4pm another 20 again!”
In November 2016, Theo Paphitis selected The Bottled Baking Co. as one of his Small Business Sunday winners, a scheme where small businesses send him a tweet describing their business. Every Monday night Theo reviews and selects his favourite six, and re-tweets them. As he has over 500,000 followers, this provides valuable publicity to those he’s chosen.
Greg travelled to the International Convention Centre in Birmingham to collect the award from Theo. Another Dragons Den favourite, Deborah Meaden, was also on hand to offer advice.
The Bottled Baking Co. currently has four ‘core’ mixes along with seasonal favourites, including a gluten-free Mini Egg Brownie mix and a Hot Cross Cake mix. More exciting recipes are planned for the coming months.
Greg is now focussing on getting his product in delis and shops across Yorkshire and beyond. All are available online at;
