Soul Kitchen's Bella Acland asked for £40,000 and four Dragons said no. Susie Ma then offered the lot for 15 per cent, on BBC One on Thursday night.

A soup business run from two units on Battlefield Enterprise Park has taken a £40,000 investment on Dragons’ Den. The episode went out on BBC One at 8pm on Thursday 17 September, series 23, episode 12 of 14.

Bella Acland, founder of Soul Kitchen, asked the Dragons for £40,000 in return for 10 per cent of the business. Four of them said no. Guest Dragon Susie Ma then offered the full amount for a 15 per cent share, and the offer was accepted.

That account comes from the Intellectual Property Office, which publishes its own write-up of every episode. Its post, published on the day of broadcast, records the ask, the four “I’m outs” and the deal. The panel that week was Peter Jones, Steven Bartlett, Deborah Meaden and Touker Suleyman, with Ma as the fifth chair. The BBC’s own episode page bills her as a “beauty empire founder”.

The Shrewsbury address behind the brand

Soul Kitchen gives its contact address, in its own privacy policy, as Units 4 and 5, Shropshire Food Enterprise Centre, Vanguard Way, Shrewsbury SY1 3TG.

That building is not an ordinary industrial shed. It is a food incubator owned by Shropshire Council, built with 12 purpose-built production units plus offices and a café. The council’s own newsroom account of it, from February 2014, called it one of only 10 food and drink incubators in the UK, and said the council took the management in house that month.

The centre is still working as one. The Food Standards Agency’s register lists these businesses at the address today, with the date each was last inspected:

  • Gelatistry Manufacturing, Unit 1, rated 5 on 29 July 2026
  • Ottolive Foods, Unit 6, awaiting its first inspection
  • Wild Street Kitchen, Unit 7, rated 5 on 15 May 2024
  • Shrewsbury Food Hub, Unit 11, rated 5 on 15 April 2021
  • SFH Community Kitchen, Unit 12, rated 5 on 26 August 2026
  • Brews and Bites Cafe, rated 5 on 10 June 2026

Companies House also records Purition Ltd, a food manufacturer incorporated in July 2012, at Unit 5 of the same centre.

It started in a parents’ kitchen, under a different name

The brand was originally The Soul Soup Co, and Acland has written her own account of how it began. She was in the third year of university, sitting her finals online during lockdown, and started dehydrating tomatoes and cauliflower in her parents’ kitchen to make instant soup that did not taste like instant soup. The family, she writes, farmed and kept a kitchen garden, and the recipes were her mother’s.

She then spent about two years working in food and drink, on the sales team of a distributor, account managing a snacking brand and working in retail on Regent Street, before launching her own.

The company’s own timeline dates the steps after that:

  • 2021: won a Santander pitching competition, which paid for the first proper batch
  • 2022: sold at farmers markets
  • 2023: moved production to what it calls a B Corp certified facility in the UK
  • 2024 and 2025: a three-star Nourish award, which the firm says went to its Mexican style red pepper and tomato soup
  • 2025: pitched in the Den

Soul Kitchen's own timeline, from a lockdown kitchen in 2021 to the broadcast on 17 September 2026

The gap matters. By the company’s own account the pitch was filmed in 2025, and viewers only saw it this week.

What it actually sells

Five flavours, sold as powder in sachets: Mexican style red pepper and tomato, curried sweet potato and pumpkin, Thai style beetroot and coconut, super greens broccoli leek and spinach, and mushroom, thyme and black pepper with lion’s mane.

From the firm’s own shop listings, a 12-serving pack is £20 and a 15-serving premium pack is £26, with a five-serving sample pack at £9.99. A Dragons’ Den bundle of 15 soups, a mug and a whisk went on sale at £25.99 against a £39.99 regular price. The shop’s own product feed shows that bundle was published on 17 September, the day the episode aired.

The company says the soups carry up to 72 per cent vegetable per serving, with no palm oil, artificial flavours, gums or emulsifiers, and that every soup is gluten free, vegan and free from all 14 major allergens. Its FAQs say they are made in a SALSA accredited factory, and that the soups need freshly boiled water and a whisk because there are no gums in them.

What we could not confirm

Soul Kitchen does not name its manufacturer anywhere on its website, and there is no Food Standards Agency registration in the Soul Kitchen name at the Shrewsbury address, which is consistent with the soups being made elsewhere under contract.

Companies House returns no active company called Soul Kitchen or Soul Soup with a Shropshire registered office, so the trading entity behind the brand is not identifiable from the register.

Sales figures have been reported elsewhere this week. We have not repeated them, because the only servings total the company publishes itself is the “100,000+” on its own story page, and we could not verify a larger figure from a first-party source. The firm also displays a Eurostar logo on its homepage without a caption explaining it, which is not enough to report a listing.

What it means for you

If you want to watch it. The episode is series 23, episode 12, first shown on BBC One at 8pm on Thursday 17 September. The BBC’s programme page is the place to check availability on iPlayer.

If you want to buy the soups in Shropshire. The company sells direct from its own website and publishes no list of stockists, so we cannot point you at a shop in the county that carries them. If you run one that does, tell us.

If you are thinking of starting a food business here. The Shropshire Food Enterprise Centre is the council’s own incubator, and it exists to take on small food and drink firms at exactly the stage Soul Kitchen was at. The council lists what it has to let on its property for sale and rent page, which was last updated on 21 August 2026 and currently carries units at Harlescott Barns and Ellesmere rather than at the food centre.

Other Shrewsbury businesses are listed in our directory of local businesses in Shrewsbury, and planning decisions across the county are tracked on our Shropshire planning page.

Sources