Cake company has recipe for TV success

Lightbody Cakes has teamed up with BBC Children's TV programme Beat the Boss​, challenging a team of children and a team of adults to compete with each other in designing a children's birthday cake.

Mark Bruce, business development manager for Lightbody Cakes, part of Finsbury Food Group, said the company had been approached by the BBC and asked to participate.

Bruce said the project had been "a nice break" for Lightbody's product development team. "It was motivational and good to get a customer understanding of what makes a good celebration cake." He also said that appearing on the programme would give the company positive exposure.

The two competing teams researched the market and then worked with management and cake and packaging designers at its Hamilton plant in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, to bring their ideas to fruition. The products were then judged by a panel of 25 children.

However, Bruce said the company would not be able to build on either of the ideas to create new products. "The BBC has a policy that if the project was aired and featured products were brought to market within three years, the programme would count as an advert and the BBC would not allow this.

"So we are prohibited from putting a product on the market based on the results of this competition. Also, strictly speaking, the intellectual property rights would reside with the contestants."

The series begins on March 3 and will be screened on BBC1, BBC2 and the CBBC channel.