Dragons’ Den brothers ‘put Birmingham on map’

Two brothers who secured investment on Dragons’ Den have “put Birmingham on the map”, according to people who have contacted them.

Brendon and Jaydon Manders, from Quinton, founded Lumberjaxe food company, selling seasonings and sauces for barbecues, in 2020.

Starting with just £100 each and working in the family kitchen, they are now stocked in more than 70 stores.

On the BBC One programme, dragon and businesswoman Emma Grede said she would give them the £90,000 they requested in exchange for a 20% share in the business.

The brothers watched the episode for the first time, like other viewers, on Thursday evening and had had to stay quiet about the outcome since it was recorded in June last year.

“[I’ve noticed] the amount of people that have reached out like on the website and Instagram, purely saying… ‘you’ve put Birmingham on the map, you’ve put Quinton on the map’,” Jaydon said.

“[Or] ‘I can see someone that’s a Brummie, got [the] same accent to me on BBC One’.”

Brendon said Ms Grede had been absolutely amazing, adding: “We didn’t have them [dragons] sort of like nitpick or sort of judge parts of the business. They sort of very much championed us when we [were] in there.”

The programme heard how the brothers were from a single-parent “council house” background and Brendon became emotional on the show.

“I feel like the dragons really resonated with what we’d sort of explained… It was just a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, wasn’t it?” Brendon said.

“The amount of messages we’ve had, people saying ‘our whole living room was crying’ and ‘my wife was crying”, when we read it, it just makes me well up really.”