Hayley Gait-Golding: BEAR

Hayley Gait-Golding, 30
Company: BEAR
Web: www.bearnibbles.co.uk

As a personal trainer, BEAR founder Hayley Gait-Golding was frequently confronted by people struggling to find healthy but tasty treats. From this BEAR was born, with the added benefits of being reasonably priced and with attractive, fun branding. Launched in 2009, BEAR turned over a respectable £2.2m in its first year. Gait-Golding’s goal is to become the nation’s favourite snack and the bags of fruit or grain are proving popular with health-conscious office workers. Stockists include Waitrose, ASDA, Harrods and the Co-op and final talks with Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Somerfield are underway. The company has also launched fruit snacks for children’s lunchboxes and is now looking at diversifying into areas such as breakfast cereal.

2013 update:

BEAR snacks continues to take the health food market by storm, with revenues of £6.7m in the 2012 financial year with this expected to rise to £10.5m in the year ending October 2013. Its BEAR Nibbles fruit snacks are now being sold by the likes of Subway and Caffe Nero as well as most major supermarket chains in the UK and the company recently started exporting to European markets including Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.