Sisters raise £660,500 for dressing brand TOSS

TOSS, a plant-based dressing brand run by sisters Grace and Sophie Devlin, has closed a funding round of £660,500.

The backers are a mix of institutional and angel money. SFC Capital and Access, the data-driven angel fund run by SyndicateRoom, both took part.

So did FIGR, the family office behind the olive oil brand Citizens of Soil, and GOTA, an angel syndicate that invests in food businesses.

Emily Shaw and Ollie, founders of the direct-to-consumer consultancy TRIBE, joined the round, alongside the angel investors William Frewin and Tom Waterhouse.

The company said the money would go on brand awareness, scaling retail distribution and widening the range.

That range currently runs to five dressings, among them Green Goddess, Miso Magic and King Caesar. TOSS sells them for dipping, marinating, glazing and spreading as well as for salad.

The products are stocked by Harrods, Selfridges, Holland & Barrett, Panzer's, Eat 17, Glasette, BEN's and Superette, plus more than 100 farm shops and delis. Wholesale partners include Mahalo, Suma, Faire, Artesian Food Club and CLF.

All the dressings are vegan, gluten-free and refined sugar-free, and the company says they contain no artificial emulsifiers or preservatives. The brand holds Great Taste Awards, the scheme run by the Guild of Fine Food, in which more than 500 industry judges rate products at one, two or three stars.

Investors made the case on the category rather than the numbers. Vincent Kuiper of GOTA said the dressing aisle had been "dominated by artificial additives for over a decade, with little meaningful innovation in sight".

Tom Britton, co-founder of SyndicateRoom, said the sisters had built "a distinctive brand with a clear point of view in a category that hasn't had one for years". Shaw of TRIBE said the raise put TOSS in a strong position to own the space.

The backdrop is less generous than the round suggests. The British Business Bank's Small Business Equity Tracker, published in July, found equity investment into UK smaller businesses fell 4 per cent to £12.3 billion in 2025, with the number of seed-stage deals down 27 per cent on the year before.

The same report found the top 10 fundraisings took 23 per cent of all the money invested. The bank has since committed £5 million to the British Design Fund to back early-stage product companies outside London.

For a founder in food, the lesson is in the cap table rather than the total. TOSS did not raise from generalists; it raised from an olive oil family office, a food angel syndicate, a DTC consultancy and two named angels, all of whom can open a buyer's door.

Neither revenue nor the equity given away has been disclosed, so the price of that shelf space is not public. What is public is where the brand already sits, and the fact that spending on awareness is now the plan rather than a hope.