Product Update

Is Tags Snack Foods Ltd Still in Business? (2026 Update)

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

Dragons' Den IndexUpdated 7 May 20266 min read

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Tags Snack Foods Ltd pitched its potato crisps business in series 13 asking for £125,000 for 30 percent of the company, and landed a joint offer from two Dragons on the day. The investment then fell apart during due diligence, which could easily have been the end of the story. It was not. Tags crisps are still around, just not where the original pitch said they would be.

The Short Answer

Yes, Tags Snack Foods is still in business, though the version of the company operating today looks quite different from the one that pitched in the Den. The founders no longer chase supermarket listings, which was the whole thrust of the original pitch, and instead sell into hotels, coffee shops and foodservice venues. The product survived. The strategy did not.

The Pitch in the Den

Founder John Tague, formerly managing director at Seabrook Crisps, brought Tags Snack Foods to series 13, episode 4, asking for £125,000 for 30 percent of the business. His background in the crisp trade gave the pitch real credibility, this was not a first-time entrepreneur guessing at manufacturing costs, and the ask reflected a plan to push the crisps into major UK supermarkets.

The filming for that episode took place in early 2015, months before the episode actually aired that August, and a lot happened for the company in the gap between the studio floor and broadcast night.

The Deal That Was Agreed, Then Unwound

On camera, Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones jointly agreed to fund the full £125,000, each taking 15 percent for a combined 30 percent, exactly matching the equity Tague had offered. It looked like as clean a two-Dragon deal as the show produces.

Not long after filming wrapped, the deal hit trouble during due diligence. Tague later said publicly that what he had committed to and what the Dragons' side understood they were committing to turned out to be two different things. The investment never completed, and Tags Snack Foods went back to running the business on its own money.

A Different Business After the Den

Losing the investment forced a change in direction. Chasing big supermarket contracts is expensive and slow, and without the Dragons' capital behind it, that route stopped making sense. Tags shifted its focus toward foodservice, coffee shops, hotels, pubs and similar venues rather than retail shelves.

That pivot has stuck. The crisps have turned up in outlets including Bean coffee shops across Greater Manchester and Merseyside, and in hotel chains such as Hotel Indigo, Crowne Plaza Liverpool and the Pullman Liverpool Hotel, as well as on Virgin's first-class trains. It is a smaller, less glamorous footprint than a national supermarket listing, but it is a real, functioning distribution channel.

Why the Foodservice Route Made Sense

Foodservice buyers care about consistency, margin and a point of difference they can talk about with guests, not shelf-facing space in a supermarket price war. A premium crisp brand with a known founder and a story about walking away from a Dragons' Den deal is exactly the kind of thing a boutique hotel or independent coffee chain likes to have on the menu.

It also sidesteps the brutal economics of competing with the big multiples' own-label crisps and the two or three national brands that dominate supermarket bays. For a small producer, foodservice can be a steadier, more defensible business than a fight for supermarket listings would ever have been.

A Founder Who Knew the Industry Already

John Tague's background as a former managing director at Seabrook Crisps meant he understood the crisp trade from the inside before he ever pitched to the Dragons, including exactly how brutal supermarket buyer negotiations can be for a small producer without major scale behind it. That experience likely made the pivot away from retail easier to accept than it would have been for a first-time founder with their heart set on seeing the product on a specific supermarket shelf.

It is a useful reminder that losing an on-air deal is not automatically a disaster. In Tags's case, it arguably pushed the business toward a channel, hospitality and foodservice, that better suited a premium, story-driven crisp brand than a head-on fight for supermarket space against national players would ever have done.

Where Things Stand Now

To recap: Tags Snack Foods Ltd asked for £125,000 for 30 percent in series 13, and Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones agreed to fund it jointly on the day. Due diligence broke the deal apart before it completed, and the company changed course, moving away from a supermarket strategy toward hotels, coffee shops and foodservice accounts.

The company is still trading and its crisps can still be found, just through a different set of doors than the pitch originally described. For Tags, walking away from the Dragons' money did not mean walking away from the business.

Where to buy Tags Snack Foods Ltd

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