Levi Roots

Why organisations work with Levi Roots

• Few founders can speak with authority on what happens after the famous television moment. Levi has lived the full arc from Dragons’ Den pitch to national distribution, brand extension, restaurant operation, and category exit.
• His Reggae Reggae Sauce became Sainsbury’s fastest-selling product in six weeks, a verifiable retail data point that grounds his story in commercial substance, not anecdote.
• He brings a distinctive blend of performance and persuasion to a stage. The guitar is not decoration; it is the brand mechanic that won the original Dragons’ Den room.
• His career covers product development, retail buyer negotiation, licensing, restaurant launch, and brand stewardship across nearly two decades. That spread is rare in motivational speakers.

Biography highlights

• Founder of Reggae Reggae Sauce; secured £50,000 investment from Peter Jones and Richard Farleigh on Dragons’ Den in 2007.
• Brand portfolio includes sauces, ready meals, soft drinks, and desserts stocked nationally across UK supermarkets.
• Operated the Levi Roots Caribbean Smokehouse at Westfield Stratford City, 2015 to 2019.
• Author of six cookbooks and the business book You Can Get It If You Really Want, published by Collins in 2011.
• MOBO Award nominee for Best Reggae Act, 1998, for the album Free Your Mind.
• Honorary Fellow of the Royal Agricultural University.

Biography

Reggae Reggae Sauce arrived in Sainsbury’s in 2007 and outsold Heinz Ketchup within six weeks. That single retail fact, more than the famous guitar pitch on Dragons’ Den, is the reason Levi Roots is taken seriously by commercial audiences. It marked one of the fastest retail launches the supermarket had recorded.

The brand has since extended into ready meals, soft drinks, desserts, restaurant partnerships, and a flagship Caribbean Smokehouse in Westfield Stratford City. Each step required a different commercial discipline, from product development and licensing to retail buyer negotiation and hospitality operation. Levi has worked through all of them with Peter Jones still on the cap table.

Before the sauce, there was a Brixton kitchen, a Notting Hill Carnival stall trading for more than twenty years, and a MOBO-nominated music career under the name Free Your Mind. That backstory matters because it explains the brand. The product was not a marketing construct. It was a recipe with a performance attached to it.

On stage, Levi works the same instinct. He plays the guitar, tells the Windrush family story, and walks audiences through what actually happens when a domestic recipe meets a national retail buyer. The argument is for founders, sales teams, and culture-led brands that need a working example of how authenticity translates into shelf space.

Key speaking topics

• Entrepreneurship and start-up scaling
• Brand building from personal narrative
• Retail launch and supermarket distribution
• Resilience and reinvention
• Cultural heritage as commercial advantage
• Storytelling and performance in business

Ideal for

• Sales conferences and retail customer events
• Founder programmes, accelerators, and entrepreneurship awards
• Diversity and inclusion events seeking a commercial voice
• After-dinner and motivational keynotes for large mixed audiences

Audience outcomes

• A concrete account of how a kitchen-table product reaches a national supermarket shelf.
• A live demonstration of how performance and personality function as brand assets.
• Direct lessons on negotiating with investors and retail buyers, drawn from a known case.
• An entertaining, music-led keynote that leaves a room energised rather than lectured.