At night I lay awake fretting I’d never pay my debts

HILLARY GRAVES, 46, FOUNDER AND CEO OF LITTLE DISH

HILLARY is mum to Monty, nine, and Ridley, seven. Her husband Dean, 46, is the managing director of Little Dish. HillarY GraveS recalls the sleepless summer nights ten years ago when she was pregnant with her first son. ‘i lay awake at night a lot,’ she says. not because she was uncomfortably hot, but because she’d just borrowed £450,000 to start her first business and worried she’d never be able to pay it back.

‘people had trusted me with all this money and i had to get them a return on their investment. it was a huge thing to take on — and i took it very seriously indeed.’

a decade later, her toddler meal business, little Dish, is having its best ever quarter, with profits up 100 per cent on this time last year, and an estimated turnover for 2016 of £12 million.

Hillary’s award-winning business is, in a sense, built on maternal guilt. approaching motherhood, she realised how hard it was for working mothers to feed their toddlers nutritionally balanced meals if they were unable to cook from scratch.

‘You had two options in the supermarket for your six to 12-monthold,’ says Hillary. ‘pouches and jars with shelf lives of several years or frozen convenience foods such as nuggets and burgers.

‘realistically, lots of women just don’t have time to cook during the week, so they were buying this food out of necessity, but feeling really bad about it. that guilt was what we wanted to alleviate.’

Her first decision was to hire a nutritionist. With then partner John Stapleton, of the new Covent Garden Soup Co, who has since left the business, they began to devise a range of low-salt, sugar-free meals for infants (fish pie, pasta bake, risotto) using only fresh ingredients and no e-numbers or additives.

Her eldest son, monty, became taster-in-chief. today, the meals sell in all major supermarkets.

last year, Hillary’s husband, Dean, left his job in finance to join little Dish as managing director.

together, they’re overseeing the launch of a snack range and a ‘healthy pizza with carrot puree in the base’.

‘it’s hard to start a business and you have to go into it with a certain amount of blind optimism,’ says Hillary. ‘For us, it’s something we do with all the family. it can be a great option if you want flexibility.’

in those early days, though, a decent work-life balance seemed a far-off dream. ‘i was eight months’ pregnant, spending whole days driving around toddler activity classes and playgroups, dropping off little Dish leaflets and flyers.

‘But the pinch point was when i had my second baby. people tell you to sleep whenever the baby does, but that was when i had to catch up on emails. i didn’t take any maternity leave.

‘i was walking through a fog of sleep deprivation, but when it’s your own business, that’s sometimes the only way.’