British BBQ blew fire into the BBC’s Dragons’ Den this evening, as the story of LumberjAxe, the sauce and seasoning business founded by Birmingham brothers Brendon and Jaydon Manders, captivated the Dragons – and one in particular, as fashion tycoon Emma Grede invested in the food company, with plans already hotting up to take the brand global.

The pitch by the brothers was an extremely emotional one, reducing Brendon, 32, to tears, as the pair presented with passion and poise, and crucially, in the heat of the inquisition, nailing the numbers, eventually securing their desired £90,000 investment from Emma Grede, co-founder, with Khloe Kardashian, of clothing label Good American, for 20% of the business. 

Emma, brought up in East London, also co-founded the shapewear brand Skims with Kim Kardashian and Safely, the plant-based cleaning products business, with Kris Jenner.

Grede is a keen cook and food lover and the brothers’ journey and drive - Emma, like Brendon and Jaydon, was raised by a single mother - resonated with her. A fire was lit in the Den.

“In the US we talk about paying it forward, We can make a great business together,” she told the brothers.

The new partners have big plans to grow the range and reach of their sauces and seasonings, so popular up and down the UK at food festivals and on live-fire cooking stages in recent years, working closely at events with BBQ magazine.  

You can already buy a Dragons’ Den bundle on the LumberjAxe website, including the Backyard BBQ sauce and the Cowboy Butter seasoning that the likes of Peter Jones and Stephen Bartlett tasted in the Den.

The brothers - Brendon the oldest and Jaydon the youngest with a brother and a sister in between - only launched the business out of a Covid conversation while taking a walk together back in 2020. Brendon, a father aged just 16 and married to nurse Sophie with five children, was a self-employed barber in Birmingham at the time, while Jaydon dreamt of being a pilot while working at McDonald’s. They thew £100 each beside the barbecue and were off.

Family is very important to them, praising the love and support of their mother Claire, grandfather Rob, whose backyard grilling first triggered their taste for outdoor cooking, and their siblings, who have all been on hand to help in the kitchen, the smoky aromas of paprika and garlic hanging in the air.

The entrepreneurial spirit was always there, with the brothers making candles and even garden statues to sell at car boot sales. “Anything we could hustle basically!” said Brendon, while Jaydon has always loved to study finance and “how to better myself.”

“The rise of BBQ in this country has played a big part in the growth and success of LumberjAxe. From sleeping in a van we couldn’t afford, full of sauces and seasonings, it has been great to watch outdoor cooking go mainstream in the UK. BBQ time is now, and we’ve always taken huge inspiration and ideas from the United States and other countries when it comes to creating great flavours.”

Jaydon, on a whim and with little hope of even an audition, decided to apply for Dragons’ Den last year without telling big brother Brendon. When the phone first rang Jaydon didn’t pick up, not recognising the number. He did the second time; it was the Dragons Den production team and could he send some LumberjAxe products and take a video call.

From that moment their feet have not touched the firepit floor. They put together a mock pitch for Dragons’ Den to consider, filming over a barbecue in their mum’s garden. The producers liked what they saw and they were in, frantically rehearsing numbers and going through past episodes to get an idea of the questions.

“We actually travelled up to record the episode in our same original van and cooked up some BBQ food for the Dragons to taste with our products on a Weber grill. The whole thing was an out-of-body experience.”

One by one the Dragons, although all suitably impressed by the flavour of their sauces and the fervour of their dreams, dropped out. “And so there was one,” said Emma. The Birmingham brothers’ world and the BBQ world just got a whole lot bigger.