Levi Roots agreed to give Dragon's Den investors 40% of Reggae Reggae Sauce for £50,000.
Roots appeared on Dragon's Den seeking investment for his Caribbean-inspired sauce business. His pitch became one of the programme’s best-known success stories because the product later developed into a major retail brand.
The 40% figure is especially easy to misremember because Roots originally offered a smaller share in exchange for the requested £50,000. The televised negotiation resulted in the investors receiving a larger combined equity stake than his opening proposal.
The deal is also associated with Peter Jones and Richard Farleigh. Roots’s business later expanded beyond the original sauce, but the question concerns the equity agreed during the televised pitch, not a later ownership percentage.