05-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
From Brazil to Bray: Wicklow entrepreneur on making real dinners for children
Bray resident Duesa de Assis has turned the cooking for children which she did naturally into a growing business. She calls it 'Hug In a Bowl'
Wicklow People
She sees herself as the accidental entrepreneur. The 47-year-old sits in her Bray apartment and talks about a business which is expanding at a most encouraging rate. Her 'Hug In a Bowl' children's dinners are now on sale in the chill cabinets of three busy South Dublin SuperValu stores, she reveals. The supermarket breakthrough is an addition to the demand from her existing customers across counties Wicklow, Dublin and Kildare.
'Hug In a Bowl', now three years on the road, is very much a one-woman show – and that woman is Duesa. The Brazilian born native, now a proud Irish citizen, is the one who devises the recipes, designs the packaging, cooks the food, and then delivers it to the waiting shops and families. Yet, if the pace of enterprise is hectic, then she shows no sign of being under any pressure. Maybe that should come as no surprise, as she has the resilience born of coming from a background that posed strenuous personal challenges on either side of the Atlantic.
