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🏆 Family Business Entrepreneurs of the Year 2024

Meet the Maker March

We’re a bit late to the party, but we wanted to check in and say “hi” for Meet the Maker March!

 

If you are new to Brownie and the Bean, you may not know this but all of our chocolate brownies, cakes and bakes are STILL handmade by Bean Daddy (aka Brownie and the Bean founder, Luke Giddings).

 

He has always had a HUGE appetite and curiosity about food and recalls his first memories as sitting on the kitchen counter, watching his Mum cooking (as a child). Whilst at university, Luke was always the person you came to (to get fed). He would always be knocking up HUGE meals for his buddies in the evenings and he enjoyed doing it! After university, Luke moved to London and worked within the cheese industry for years. His encyclopaedic knowledge for cheese was just the foundation of the food journey that was to come.

 

Whenever Luke had time off from his demanding job in the cheese world, he would scourer markets and unusual shops throughout London for cooking ingredients. The more difficult to get hold of/ skill involved, the better. In fact, when we first met, he really opened my eyes to the culinary wonders that London had to offer. Every weekend he’d take me on a different journey across the world through food. We’d also move around London visiting some wonderful hidden gems he’d read about in his cooking blogs.  One of our favourites was an Eritrean restaurant in Woolwich which was recommended by Yottam Ottolenghi. We ended up having our wedding breakfast there when we got married in 2016.

 

It was time to take the plunge!

 

Luke and I had discussed the prospect of leaving London and starting a food and drink business. He was very keen on having a business that focused on being expert in one thing. After running through thousands of ideas, we were both hooked on the idea of using Luke’s mother’s chocolate brownie recipe as the foundation for our business. We originally set out as a mobile cafe, operating from our mobile trailer that we converted. However, covid hit and we decided to close the hatch for good and set up a brownie delivery service.

 

To begin with, we posted our chocolate brownies by post all over the UK. During lockdown, they proved to be very popular, however when lockdown reopened, the online sales were getting noticeably quieter.

 

We were already selling our wholesale brownies and also delivering them across the UK, but at this point, we decided we needed to diversify with cakes. Thankfully, the wholesale cakes have proven to be a massive success and our business now has three different streams: online chocolate brownies (delivered to your door), corporate brownies (delivered UK wide with branding options available) and UK wide wholesale cake deliveries.

 

The future…

 

We absolutely LOVE what we do and wouldn’t want to do anything else. The fact that we get to make people so happy with our food is the best feeling ever! Expect even more diversity of flavours and product lines. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll move into a bigger premises. For now though, one thing you can guarantee is that buying your brownies online with us, not only supports our family, but lots of other small businesses. We will always shop local wherever possible to source ingredients and we will continue to make everything from scratch.

 

If our Meet the Maker March blog has whet your appetite, you can find out more about Bean Daddy in this clip!

 

 

A close up of Bean Daddy in the Brownie and the Bean kitchen. He has a large silver mixing bowl and is using a handheld whisk. He is wearing black chef's whites with the Brownie and the Bean logo and he also has a black cap with the Brownie and the Bean logo on.