Emma Killilea

Emma Killilea, a successful business woman from Sheffield, created her own gluten-free brand, Delicious Alchemy, after being diagnosed with the auto-immune Coeliac disease in 2005.  Emma is committed to raising the profile of the Coeliac disease and has pledged to support fellow sufferers in their fight to cope with the symptoms and to lead normal lives.

For Emma, discovering she had a to remain on seriously restricted diet for the rest of her life turned out to be just the push she needed to set up her own award-winning business. Tired with the limited range of gluten free foods, she set about forming her own company, selling a range or breakfast cereals, breads, cakes and desserts to supermarkets, restaurants and hotels, specifically catering for food allergies. Her mission was to create fresh, high quality food for people who have food allergies.  Emma and her team are constantly innovating new products, adding to the growing list of foods that are available.

Emma says ‘When I was 28 found out I could not eat anything containing gluten. I couldn’t buy nice food even in the supermarket, so I had to start making everything for myself. There was very little in the way of ready meals I could have, so I had to get back into cooking…I started researching and found out that 10% of the population suffers from a food allergy and I knew I could do something, so I started baking and experimenting.”

Before Delicious Alchemy, Emma was a self employed consultant for various video games development companies, she had never written a business plan and just got work from people she knew. After she came up with her concept she sold her house and went back to university in Sheffield to study for a food degree.

Within a year of starting her degree she won the Sheffield Hallam University Enterprise Challenge, then the Yorkshire and Humberside Universities’ ‘Winner of Winners’ award and amongst others the NESTA Student entrepreneur of the year award.

Emma knew she had to get the product formulation right, so she had to keep baking until she was happy.  It wasn’t long before her efforts paid off and the company began winning awards.  Their award winning products are now available in most supermarkets, hotels and restaurants across the country.

Emma’s topics include

• The journey to setting up the business
• Obstacles I’ve overcome in the first few years of the business
• What I would have done better
• Changes I’m planning to make to the business as a result of learning on the hoof
• Blowing up myths about business – how it’s all about people and personal relationships with customers
• Overcoming personal tragedies