'I started a bakery over pain of kids' intolerances'

Ryan Panchoo started Borough 22 Doughnuts after his own children struggled to find food that they enjoyed

"My kids would be so excited to see their friends, but as soon as the food came out, it was just disappointment and segregation because they were so isolated."

Ryan Panchoo set out to develop his own allergy friendly products out of the "heartbreak" of his two children's intolerances, despite having had no previous background in cookery or baking.

More than a decade later and Mr Panchoo has scooped several awards for Borough 22 Doughnuts, his vegan, gluten-free and nut-free bakery, which is also Halal and Kosher-certified.

Having previously only been based in London with a website shipping nationwide, Borough 22 Doughnuts now has a six-week pop-up in Birmingham's Selfridges, with the possibility of staying in the city on the horizon.

He set out on his endeavour after his own children, now aged 15 and 19, struggled when they were younger to find allergen-free food that was also tasty.

Products containing either gluten or dairy caused them to react - the reaction to dairy being particularly violent.

Mr Panchoo, 46, said it led to a "pain point as a parent".

"They can't eat what their friends are eating, which looks amazing, and they can't be part of that bigger picture," he said.

"The food they have is safe for them but it's just boring, it's bland, it's kind of dry and it just really used to break my heart as a parent. I really felt for them, and that was the catalyst for kickstarting the company."

Borough 22 Doughnuts began as a "side project" in 2014

Mr Panchoo, from Brockley in south London, had worked for a property investment company after starting out as a bricklayer, so baking was a whole new world.

He started making and selling baked gluten and dairy free doughnuts in October 2014 as "a side project", which became award-winning, but he still wanted to master the art of an allergen-friendly deep-fried doughnut.

"After eight years of trial and error, I finally cracked it on 1 May 2022," he said.

"It's just phenomenal how that changed the face of the business."

Having perfected his fried doughnuts, Mr Panchoo registered Borough 22 Doughnuts as an official company in February 2023.

'Inclusive as possible'

All of the doughnuts are dairy-free and gluten-free, with the company sourcing oats from the only certified gluten-free oat farm in the UK. They are also and made in a completely nut-free environment.

Mr Panchoo said they were almost completely free of the UK's main 14 allergens, excluding soya in some of the doughnuts' toppings.

"The aim for me is to make these doughnuts as inclusive as possible so that nobody has to feel like they're isolated, like I experienced with my children," he said.

Since setting up in 2014, the "free from" sector has become huge business.

According to the Grocer magazine it is worth £4.2bn to the UK economy annually, and in May the British Baker magazine said the sector was one of the fastest growing in the bakery industry.

Borough 22 Doughnuts could ultimately set up a permanent base in Birmingham, Mr Panchoo said

Mr Panchoo said Birmingham was a natural next step for the company, with large numbers of online orders coming to the city already, and having sold more than 3,000 doughnuts in two days at a festival in Digbeth this year.

If the brand sells well in Selfridges, he said there was an opportunity for the firm to stay permanently in Birmingham.

More than a decade on from first starting the business, Mr Panchoo said things had improved for people with allergies and intolerances in the UK, especially since the introduction of Natasha's Law - named after Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who died aged 15 after eating a baguette containing hidden sesame seeds.

"Natasha's Law forced people to wake up and recognise that these things are serious," he said.

But while awareness is growing, he believes for many companies, catering for allergies is done with a "tick box mentality".

"A lot of brands are jumping on it just because of the commercials, to make some money," he said.

"We really want to just make amazing food that just happens to be free from. We don't want to be niche. There's a lot of stigma around free-from food being sub-par and we want to change that."