Is Chika's Foods Still in Business? (2026 Update)
Still after Chika's Foods?We have not confirmed a current listing, so this searches Amazon for you.
Look for Chika's Foods on AmazonFull story →Chika Russell pitched an African-inspired snack range built on family recipes and genuine flavour differentiation.
The short answer is a confident yes, and this is one of the clearer cases of a founder correctly judging she did not need outside money.
Five Offers, One Accepted On Camera
Russell asked for £30,000 for a 25 percent stake, and the record shows she accepted Peter Jones's offer on camera, after every Dragon on the panel that day reportedly wanted in, a genuinely rare response for any pitch.
That kind of universal appeal across the whole panel, rather than landing with just one specialist investor, says something about how well the product and the story behind it came across, even before anything happened afterward.
Growth Well Past The Pitch
By previous accounts, Russell chose not to proceed with the investment once filming wrapped, and built the brand independently into a business reportedly employing around 230 people and selling close to twenty products across roughly 3,000 UK stockists, alongside a growing operation in Nigeria.
Turning down interest from the entire panel only looks like an obviously safe call in hindsight, and here the founder's own read of a values-driven customer base willing to seek the brand out on supermarket shelves turned out to be the more accurate one.