Thursday 26th October 2023 saw an exciting series of events as the Lion’s Den 2023 finalists competed for one of two €5,000 Digital Marketing prizes, and we announced our winners!

How It All Happened

Six finalists, three from our Start-Up Award category and three from our Excellence Award category pitched their brand and product to a panel of industry professionals  as part of Lion’s Den 2023, at this year’s Dublin Food Chain Producer Showcase in collaboration with the four Dublin region Local Enterprise Offices.

Our Lions

Our judges included Gary Osborne, Insight and Brand Planning Specialist at Bord Bia, Donal Flynn, food and wine buyer for Fallon & Byrne, and Domini Kemp, chef, food writer and entrepreneur. With stiff competition at hand, they had a hard job to discern who would take hold of the €5,000 prizes.

Start-Up Award

Tara Kelly of Tae Tea and Valentin Invancenco from Fairmental impressed our judges with their product samples, and presentations for the Start-Up Award. A close one, Patirck and Sun took home the Start-Up Award for their product Born Again. A huge congratulations to them both, and very well done to both Tara and Val. Our judges had a tough decision to make on the day.

Excellence Award

Sofie Rooney and Garret Fitzgerald pitched their Chimac sauces, and Ivan Varian presented our judges with Sorbetto. Rachel of Zingibeer walks away with a €5,000 Lion’s Den 2023 prize to boost their digital marketing. Another tough call for our judges.

The Prizes

Prizes includes digital strategy, planning, creative, and evaluation along with digital insights and mentoring from the Bradley Team. An additional €1,000 has been added to each prize for advertising spend, bringing the total value to €6,000 each!

More to Come!

The calibre of applications was sky high this year. It’s clear to see that Dublin’s food and beverage industry is alive and well, getting stronger by the year. We’re already looking forward to next year! Keep up to date on www.lionsden.ie or @lionsdenevent_ on Instagram, and with Bradley across Instagram, Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter.

Lion’s Den 2023 comes to an end. But not without insight and interviews with the participants and judges yet to come. Next year it could be you!