![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/0021e680-614.jpg\"\/)
\nDenise Buckley in the Sugar Plum Sweetery shop in Mullingar<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The company’s top selling products in 2025 were created by them from scratch and did not exist in 2024.<\/p>\n
This led to the company increasing its revenue from \u20ac480,000 in 2024 to \u20ac4.3m in 2025 and scale their team from 10 to 40 employees.<\/p>\n
By the end of the year the company plans to employ 100 people when they expand their factory.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Speaking on RT\u00c9’s Morning Ireland, Sugar Plum Sweetery co-owner Denise Buckley said nothing has changed for them in terms of recipe.<\/p>\n
However, she acknowledged they were able to buy and secure their ingredients ahead of time
because they had such a good year last year.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
\nDenise Buckley in the Sugar Plum Sweetery shop in Mullingar<\/p>\n
As part of its strategy the company launches two to three new products per month, with 10 currently on the kitchen table.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
The company is currently working on a host of “really new creative bars” and products for Christmas.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“The demand is there,” said Ms Buckley, “we get asked all the time.”<\/p>\n
The company already hide golden tickets in their products and winners can go to their chocolate factory and spend time with their chocolatiers.<\/p>\n
“We know that there’s such a huge demand for that, we want to do something like that,” Ms Buckey said.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A self-styled “Irish Willy Wonka” business in Co Westmeath has taken the top prize at the National Enterprise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-507693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}