Product Update

Is B Tempted Still in Business? (2026 Update)

Is B Tempted from Dragons’ Den still around in 2026? The deal it made, the dragons who invested, and where to buy B Tempted today.

Dragons' Den IndexUpdated 4 February 20266 min read

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Sarah Hilleary started B Tempted in 2009 because she could not find a gluten-free cake that did not taste like a compromise. Years after her Dragons' Den pitch, the bakery is still going, and it has ended up in some rather grand company along the way.

The short answer

B Tempted is still in business. The gluten-free bakery continues to hand-make cakes, brownies and traybakes from its dedicated gluten-free site in Leytonstone, East London, and its products are still stocked in some of the country's best-known food halls. There is no Amazon listing, the brand sells through its own website and physical retail partners.

For a niche bakery competing against every mainstream cake brand on the shelf, staying stocked in premium retail for this long is a genuinely strong signal.

Gluten-free food has become a far more crowded category since Hilleary first started baking, with most major supermarkets now running entire free-from aisles stocked with mass-produced options. A small dedicated bakery holding its ground in premium retail against that kind of competition, rather than being squeezed out, points to a genuine quality gap the bigger brands have not closed.

The Dragons' Den pitch

Sarah Hilleary pitched B Tempted in series 15, episode 8, bringing gluten-free cakes and brownies built for people with food intolerances who still wanted a proper treat, not a sad substitute. Her own experience with gluten intolerance was the reason the business existed in the first place.

She asked for £75,000 in exchange for 40 percent of the company, a sizeable equity slice that reflected how much capital a small food producer needs to scale production and distribution.

Founder-led food pitches built on personal necessity, rather than a spotted market gap, tend to land well with the Dragons because the founder's motivation is harder to fake. Hilleary was not chasing a trend, she was solving a problem she lived with daily, and that authenticity came through in how the pitch was received.

The deal that got done

Tej Lalvani, chief executive of Vitabiotics, backed Hilleary for the full £75,000 at the 40 percent stake on the table. Lalvani has built a career scaling consumer health and wellness brands, and gluten-free food sits close enough to that world to make the fit sensible.

For a small bakery with genuine craft behind the product but limited resources to chase supermarket buyers and export deals, a Dragon with manufacturing and distribution muscle is exactly the kind of partner that turns a good recipe into a stocked shelf.

Where the cakes ended up

B Tempted's gluten-free cakes and brownies, including a range that has picked up multiple Great Taste Awards, are sold through Harrods, Selfridges, Fortnum & Mason, Whole Foods Market and Bayley & Sage, a genuinely upmarket spread for a bakery that started as one woman's solution to her own dietary problem.

The brand has also been used to supply catering for royal family engagements, which is about as strong a stamp of quality as a small British bakery can get. That is not the kind of relationship that survives if the product or the operation behind it falls apart.

The bakery also holds SALSA accreditation, a food safety certification that major retailers and caterers require before they will list a small producer, at its dedicated gluten-free site in Leytonstone. Maintaining that kind of formal accreditation over years, rather than letting it lapse, is another quiet indicator that the operation behind the brand is still running properly rather than coasting on past reputation.

For a founder who started out baking in her own kitchen and selling at a local market, ending up supplying Harrods and catering royal events is about as complete a validation of the original idea as a small food business can hope for.

The bottom line

B Tempted asked for £75,000 for 40 percent, secured exactly that from Tej Lalvani, and has spent the years since building a genuinely premium gluten-free bakery brand rather than a mass-market one. It sells through its own site and a roster of high-end retailers rather than Amazon.

If you want to try the cakes, the company's website and its stockists, from Harrods to Whole Foods, remain the way to get hold of them.

Where to buy B Tempted

Still selling as of 4 February 2026. Check today's price and availability.

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See the full B Tempted deal breakdown and term sheet →