Everyone’s favourite business show Dragons’ Den is back on TV tonight. For some, it’s the perfect starter to ease into the evening before tucking into a main course of The Traitors; for others, it’s the thrill of watching car crash pitches unfold.
Last week, fitness guru Joe Wicks made his debut as a guest dragon, and two businesses walked away with cash injections: one pitching a gym-in-a-bag and another offering silicone bands to keep kids’ shoelaces tied during sports.
While some viewers criticised the ongoing format change from the last series, calling guest dragons “pointless”, you’ll be pleased to know it’s back to the famous five this week.
Tonight, Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Touker Suleyman, Sara Davies and Steven Bartlett will be scrutinising a fresh batch of pitches including a premium frozen pizza brand, an innovative AI video editing software and a subscription service for football shirts. Here’s everything you need to know, and where to buy their products.
Doughboys Pizza: £4.95, Ocado.com
First in the den are Reading-based twin brothers Luke and Owen Buckmaster, who have a tasty proposition they hope will have the dragons smacking their lips – Italian-made frozen pizzas. Needless to say, the IndyBest team loved them.
Launched in 2020, Doughboys Pizza began by producing hand-stretched sourdough pizza bases from Italy exclusively for the hospitality industry. The brand’s authentic signature sourdough recipe is slow-proved, individually hand-stretched, topped with fresh ingredients, then traditionally stone-baked and blast-frozen to lock in freshness.
Recently expanding the business to bring a slice of Italy directly to consumers at home, the duo at Doughboys makes four different types of frozen pizzas that you can buy from Ocado, all costing £4.95 each. There’s a spicy salami pizza, a classic margherita pizza, prosciutto and mushroom pizza and a veggie giardino pizza.
Choppity AI video editor: Choppity.com
Dragons’ Den often reflects what’s current and trending, and Choppity fits right in. Married couple Zara Paul and Aaron Morris from Durham enter the den with an AI-powered, automated video editor – dubbed the “Canva for video”, will it pique the dragons’ interest?
Launched in 2022, Choppity is designed to simplify and streamline video editing for creators. It can create captions, automatically detect the most engaging clips from a long clip, instantly turn a landscape video into a portrait one, automatically censor swear words, track people in-shot and more.
Choppity has multiple tiers of pricing. The free tier gets you 30 minutes of video uploads per month, but you can also pay extra for an individual creator subscription for more editing freedom, as well as a team subscription.
Mystery Jersey King: Mysteryjerseyking.com
Last into the den is Nottingham-based Alex Street, who is hoping to woo the dragons with his monthly-based football shirt subscription service. But will they be cheering him on or asking for the sack?
Founded in 2021, Mystery Jersey King is a subscription box that gives football shirt collectors a new, authentic and high-quality strip from around the world every single month. If you have a certain dislike for a specific team, Mystery Jersey King can avoid them.
Shirts are brand-new and can be from a team in any league, any country from around the world and from any year. There are mystery boxes for men, women and kids and even mystery boxes for NBA, NFL and MLB.
What time is Dragons’ Den on tonight?
If getting some insight into the businesses going for gold has gotten you excited to watch this week’s episode, Dragons’ Den will air tonight (16 January) on BBC1 at 8pm.
Missed last week? Catch up on all the businesses in episode one now
