When walked into his pitch with a guitar in one arm and tasters of his Reggae Reggae sauce for the investors, he had no idea of in just a few weeks.
He went from having never heard of the One competition to outselling Heinz in little time, after impressing not one but two Dragons, and walking away with a £50,000 investment for 40% of his business.
Though his business skills and numbers knowledge were less impressive, his pitch went down in history as one of the most memorable, after he sung to the likes of , and Duncan Bannatyne.
In a recent interview, Peter, who invested in the Reggae Reggae sauce brand alongside Richard Farleigh, commented that the best pitch in remains Levi’s, telling Metro and other press: ‘I don’t think we’ve surpassed that yet.’
Since his appearance on the show in 2007, Levi has gone on be worth an estimated £30,000,000, according to The Sunday Times Rich List, has opened a restaurant, published a book, and even hosted his own cooking show on BBC Two.
But it took just weeks for Levi to achieve an impressive level of success, after a ‘magical’ experience.
In an interview with Metro, the Celebrity Big Brother star said: ‘It’s one of those magical moments that you pray for, that we all pray for.
‘We all dream about something absolutely ridiculous happening to our lives, but it always turns out to be a dream, you wake up and you realize that it’s a dream and it’s really disappointing, and you feel like going back to sleep just to get back into that dream.
‘But I suppose in this instance, it was all of that… you’re still actually living that dream, and it’s not a dream, it is actually reality. It’s fantastic, it’s unbelievable.
‘There’s no way I would have thought that something like that would have happened to myself, as a young Rastafarian man coming from Brixton in southwest London.’
‘So it was unbelievable, I pinched myself a thousand times until I was black and blue all over, and the response was the same – that I did do it. I did slay the Dragons. It was fantastic. Really unbelievable,’ he said.
Following the investments from two Dragons, it was the feeling of seeing his sauce on shelves in Sainsbury’s that’s stuck with him.
‘Things happened so quick and so fast, I don’t think any other person who had gone into the Den had experienced the fast movement of the sort I did.
‘In a matter of weeks of being on the show to it being in Sainsbury’s, and the next thing I knew, I was the most famous black man in the country that didn’t kick a ball or run fast, because this was about business, and it was particularly new to a lot of people, especially in my community.
‘To see one of us doing so well, and it wasn’t about music or sports, it was just something completely different, that was a really, really quick experience.’
He recalled one conversation with Peter after the cameras stopped rolling, where the businessman reassured Levi to just be himself, as someone ‘with a passion to be able to sell the brand, because the sauce cannot sell itself’.
‘That was music to my ears,’ Levi said.
He went on: ‘And it was just a matter of three weeks after the sauce was in Sainsbury’s that we got the news back from [the chief of Sainsbury’s] that the sauce was outselling Heinz tomato ketchup, and it was mind-blowing.’
The first time Reggae Reggae Sauce was stocked in supermarkets, Levi took his mum with him, and said it was one of the earliest memories of his success.
‘It was a magical moment, because it was the moment that I had finally done well for my mum. She had believed in me the whole time, even before I went on the show, when my friends were telling me, “Don’t play the guitar,”… they were telling me that it’s not The X Factor.’
‘The only person that really believed in me was my mum, and she said to me, “Be you, take the guitar and be the best of yourself”,’ he added.
Despite the immense success he went on to have, Levi admitted there was a moment of doubt while he was in the Den, after refusing to watch any episodes of the entrepreneurial competition before his own turn.
When asked what memory sticks with him from filming, he told us: ‘Well, I think the memory that comes to mind really is, “What the heck am I doing here?”
‘Because I’d never seen Dragons’ Den, I never watched it, and the only time I experienced the show was actually when I was on it.’
Ignoring advice from his children and those around him to not sing in his pitch or play the guitar, and to actually watch the programme first, Levi refused and said he ‘didn’t want to be scared before I got there’.
‘Everybody was saying what a horrible person Peter Jones can be, and Duncan Bannatyne, and all the superlatives that you can get about how the Dragons are nasty, that was being stuck down my throat by a lot of people because they knew that I didn’t want to know about it, so they were trying to give me a warning.
‘So really, it was that first shock of the moment when I got inside and saw the setup of the Den and thought that it wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be with me singing, saying to myself that all I needed to do is just be Levi, just be me with my music, with my guitar and my song.
‘I thought that was going to be enough, but I think there was a slight doubt in the moment when I actually was faced with them, and just thinking to myself, “What the hell am I doing?”‘
It was after his pitch and his song that the doubt really sunk it. ‘Singing the song, I was in my element,’ Levi said. ‘Music was my thing, my guitar was like my comfort blanket.’
Standing in front of the investors in that moment, he felt like he was performing for a crowd of 5,000, as the Mobo award nominee continued: ‘I put myself into the mindset of saying that these are not five guys, these are 5,000 guys that I’m performing to.
‘But it was the moment after the song had finished, when the song had done its business [where I felt doubt].
‘It was amazing to see the response of the Dragons on their faces when I started to sing, and it was just like when I’m on stage singing that song, and the crowd loves it, and you can see that look on their faces.
‘But it was that moment after the song had finished, and I realized that this is why my kids were saying that I needed to look up what Dragons’ Den was about because it also was about numbers as well, and about that business side of things, and that was the shock moment for me.’
Despite the feeling of doubt, Levi became the show’s biggest success, paving the way for the likes of .
Nearly two decades since he first entered into the professional partnership with Peter, Levi added that he’d ‘always be forever grateful’ to him, and credits his success to him.
‘I met five Dragons in the den, and slayed them all, but I kept Peter alive,’ he said. ‘I didn’t slay him because he’s been such an inspirational person… Peter has been with me throughout the journey, and we’re still pretty much business partners and also really good friends too.
‘He’s been the magic cog in the wheel of the success of Levi Roots. He’s an amazing man, and I will always be forever grateful to Peter.’
Dragons’ Den returns to BBC One and iPlayer on Thursday at 8pm.
