‘We eat chocolate in the morning’ – Enterprise winner

A self-styled “Irish Willy Wonka” business in Co Westmeath has taken the top prize at the National Enterprise Awards hosted by the Local Enterprise Offices.

Business at the Mullingar-based Sugar Plum Sweetery soared after it jumped on a viral chocolate trend and it has boosted revenue by 815% in a single year.

The company’s top selling products in 2025 were created by them from scratch and did not exist in 2024.

This led to the company increasing its revenue from €480,000 in 2024 to €4.3m in 2025 and scale their team from 10 to 40 employees.

By the end of the year the company plans to employ 100 people when they expand their factory.

Their ability to spot and adapt to trends such as the Dubai Chocolate bar saw them create trendsetting sweet treats in a matter of weeks that similar companies were taking months to turn around.

They have managed to do this while cocoa prices soared in 2024 and 2025 due to shortages in Africa and the Iran war hit pistachio supplies.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Sugar Plum Sweetery co-owner Denise Buckley said nothing has changed for them in terms of recipe.

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However, she acknowledged they were able to buy and secure their ingredients ahead of time
because they had such a good year last year.

“If you’ve got turnover and money to reinvest back into the business you don’t fall into those holes as much as you would have before,” she said.

“You have these ups and downs but we have secured our customer prices for this year just because of the success we had last year,” she added.

As part of its strategy the company launches two to three new products per month, with 10 currently on the kitchen table.

“We eat we chocolate in the morning, its the best time for your palate. I know it sounds nuts but you can really taste things as well because it’s literally the first thing so you get the buzz,” she explained.

The company is currently working on a host of “really new creative bars” and products for Christmas.

“It’s really important for us to continually push the boundaries with new products because that’s what our customers want, so it’s really important to us.”

Sugar Plum Sweetery currently has a destination store in Mullingar and another shop in Kildare Village with plans for two more stores, as well as more than 100 retail stockists.

Part of the future for the business is a plan to build a visitor centre potentially in the style of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

“The demand is there,” said Ms Buckley, “we get asked all the time.”

The company already hide golden tickets in their products and winners can go to their chocolate factory and spend time with their chocolatiers.

“We know that there’s such a huge demand for that, we want to do something like that,” Ms Buckey said.

“That’s also part of our future as we currently expand and that we have the opportunity to do that and just have something really great, especially in Mullingar,” she added.