We Won Best Small Business 2026!
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I’m still getting used to saying this, but Deliciously Guilt Free, the sugar free chocolate business I started in 2018, has been named Best Small Business 2026 at the National Entrepreneur Awards.
The award was presented at the National Entrepreneurs Convention at the ICC Birmingham and, to make the whole thing even more surreal, I was actually handed the award by Alex Horne.
It was genuinely exciting to meet him. We had a chat about Deliciously Guilt Free and he told me he couldn’t wait to try the chocolate. He even wanted to go and check out the website himself, which was a pretty brilliant moment!
The win has also been covered by the Cambridge Independent, Business Weekly and Food & Drink International, if you’d like to read more.
But standing there with the award, I couldn't help thinking about how far this little business has come.
Because we really are still a little business.
Deliciously Guilt Free has grown enormously over the last year. We’ve gone from a business turning over around £400,000 a year to being on course for more than £1.2 million.
Writing that down feels slightly bonkers.
But what makes me particularly proud is that we’ve achieved that growth without turning Deliciously Guilt Free into something completely different from the business I originally set out to create.
We still make our chocolate ourselves. We still obsess over the recipes. We still care enormously about what goes into every bar. And we still make keto-friendly chocolate with zero added sugar, low carbs and no palm oil for people who, for all sorts of reasons, want to cut down on sugar without giving up chocolate.
How on earth did we get here?
Deliciously Guilt Free actually started because of my wife, Basma.
When Basma was pregnant with our daughter Hana, she developed gestational diabetes. Suddenly we were looking much more carefully at sugar and carbohydrates, and we discovered just how difficult it was to find the sorts of treats we actually wanted to eat.
So I started experimenting with sugar free chocolate.
At the time, I was teaching children with special educational needs. I certainly wasn't a professional chocolatier. I simply started teaching myself, trying recipes, changing them, recording what worked and, quite frequently, discovering what didn't.
Those experiments eventually became Deliciously Guilt Free in 2018. For a long time our bars were sold as Keto Craft Chocolate, and you'll still spot that name on some of our labels, but we've gone back to the name we started with.
Fast forward to today and that little idea has become a keto chocolate business with thousands of customers across the UK and beyond.
We now have more than 8,500 five-star reviews, which is a number I find difficult to get my head around. We have customers who send us Christmas cards and presents. And, amazingly, one customer has spent more than £15,000 on our chocolate in just a few years.
That sort of loyalty means an enormous amount to me.
Growing a very small business
One of the things I particularly love about winning Best Small Business is that we genuinely are one.
We've achieved this growth with a tiny team, and I'm incredibly proud of what they've achieved.
September alone was a huge month for us because we tripled the size of the team. And who knows what happens next? Perhaps we'll double again over the next 12 months.
Growing quickly with a small team has forced us to become much better at how we run the business. We've documented processes, become increasingly obsessed with our numbers and data, and built a marketing operation that regularly generates between four and six times return on our investment.
Social media has played a huge part too.
Our videos on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube regularly reach tens of thousands of people, and some individual videos have now been watched millions of times.
All of that has allowed us to grow without abandoning what makes DGF special. We haven't decided that growth means forgetting about the product and simply mass-producing as much chocolate as possible.
We're still making proper chocolate. We're still improving it. And we're still incredibly fussy about what reaches our customers.
The bit that matters most to me
As wonderful as the growth and the award are, one of the things I'm proudest of isn't actually a financial achievement at all.
We supply keto Easter eggs and keto Advent calendars to the children's ketogenic clinic at Addenbrooke's Hospital.
Some of the children there follow extremely strict ketogenic diets as part of the treatment of conditions such as epilepsy. That can mean missing out on things other children take completely for granted, particularly around occasions such as Easter and Christmas.
Being able to make chocolate that allows some of those children to join in is incredibly special to me.
And, in a strange way, it brings everything full circle.
Deliciously Guilt Free began because I was trying to make something for one person I loved.
I wanted Basma to be able to enjoy something sweet while dealing with gestational diabetes.
Today, we're making chocolate for thousands of people who, whether they're cutting down on sugar, eating keto or low carb, or simply looking after their health, thought chocolate might be something they needed to give up.
After the awards, Nigel Botterill, the founder of Entrepreneurs Circle, said something about DGF that really stuck with me.
He talked about the thread running through our story: from a husband trying to make something his wife could enjoy, all the way through to supplying Easter eggs and Advent calendars for children at Addenbrooke's.
I think he's right.
And that brings me to something else that's really important to me.
I don't want us to stop feeling small
Go back to 2019 or 2020 and Deliciously Guilt Free was being run from my kitchen table at home.
I answered every single email.
I replied to every review.
I saw every order that came in.
Every little detail of the business passed in front of me because, frankly, there wasn't anyone else there to do it!
Obviously, as we've grown, that has had to change. I've built a team around me, and I'm incredibly proud of them and what we've achieved together.
But there's something about those kitchen-table days that I never want to lose.
I don't want DGF to become one of those businesses where growth means putting more and more distance between us and the people who actually buy our chocolate.
Whether we're a £1.2 million business, a £2 million business or something much bigger one day, I still want us to feel like that little family business.
I want to know what you're saying about our chocolate.
I want to read your reviews.
I want to hear when we've got something right and, just as importantly, when we haven't.
I want to see the names of our regular customers and recognise them.
I want DGF to continue to feel personal, human and authentic.
Because ultimately, I started this business to help my wife.
And now I want to use it to help you.
The team might get bigger. The kitchen might get bigger. Hopefully quite a few more bars of chocolate will be heading out through people's letterboxes.
But I don't ever want to lose that feeling that there's a real little business, with real people, on the other end of your order.
So yes, I'm unbelievably proud that we're now able to call ourselves Best Small Business 2026.
But perhaps the bigger challenge is making sure that, however much Deliciously Guilt Free grows from here, we continue to deserve the word small in all the ways that really matter.
And that's my commitment to you.
As featured in
- Cambridge Independent: Deliciously Guilt Free wins 'fantastic' small business award
- Business Weekly: National award for Cambridge chocolate maker
- Food & Drink International: Cambridge chocolate maker triples turnover and wins national award
If you want to read my blog about Christmas Chocolate Tubs 2026: How Much Smaller Are They Now?, click here.
If you want to read my blog about Keto Halloween Treats at Addenbrooke's, click here.
If you want to read my blog about why "sugar free" chocolate annoys me, click here.
