If you have a new food product, getting one of Britain's big supermarkets' chains to stock it is a salesperson's dream. Clinching online distribution at the same time is even better. Somehow Hillary Graves did both, right at the start of her new business, Little Dish.

New Yorker Graves, 36, came to London in 2000 to launch the UK business women's website ivillage. Then she married an Englishmen and decided to stay in the UK, joining Yahoo! Europe as head of marketing before working as a consultant for start- up frozen baby food company Babylicious. There she met John Stapleton, co-founder of Coven Garden Soup Company, and they dreamt up the idea of fresh, nutritional ready-to-serve meals for toddlers. They formed Little Dish secured funding and set out to persuade Britain's biggest grocery chains to stock its products.

A year later, Little Dish has ready meals, sauces and fromage frais desserts on sales at Waitrose and its online home delivery service Ocado. It also has products on sale at Sainsbury's and Tesco.‘I was constantly being told by relatives how hard it is for mothers of children who have just reached the age of 12 months,' says managing director Graves. She works with seven staff from offices in Notting Hill, west London, subcontracting the food production chosen partner firm in Leicester. ‘The children are not eating baby food any more but it's not easy to know what to give them because they're not really supposed to have added salt or sugar or very spicy food,' said Graves. ‘It's very difficult, especially if you all want to eat together.

‘We had the idea of creating freshly made, hand-prepared meals for young children with no salt or sugar added and offering them as chilled foods. No one was doing that at the time and no one else is doing what we are doing now. Our foods have a very short shelf life of just five days. There are no additives or preservatives in them. ‘They also contain 100% fresh ingredients. All the chicken and beef comes from UK farms and the milk comes from the Channel Island cows. ‘We did lots of research before launching and three out of four mothers were telling us they would buy ready meals for their children. ‘Some said they have felt so guilty about it and that it made them bad mothers because their children ate with additives and preservatives. One of our goals was to do something to alleviate their guilt.'

Graves and Stapleton developed five meal recipes with the help of nutritionists - fish pie, cottage pie, pasta Bolognese, mild chicken curry and vegetarian pasta with cheese, peas and broccoli. Then they had to find routes to market. They started with the internet.‘I felt that it was convenient for mothers that we had to try it first,' says Graves. ‘But we went to Ocado with our hand-prepared meals and it said that though it was a perfect idea we had to get them into Waitrose stores as well, as it would work much better if the meals were in the stores at the same time. ‘So we went to see a Waitrose buyer. That took another three meetings, but she agreed to put the meals in 20 stores'.

The meals quickly took off. ‘In the first week of the meals being available on Ocado we sold out of stock,' says Graves. ‘Some of our customers have become quite evangelical about Little Dish and one asked why we didn't do desserts. There was no fromage frais on the market without added sugar so we developed Little Dish fromage frais. ‘The people wanted sauces from the meals on their own so we launched fresh tomato and cheese sauces with no added salt or sugar.'

Now Little Dish has its meals in 110 Waitrose stores and desserts in 130 and its sauces are going to 150 Waitrose shops in June. ‘It's meant we've had to form relationships with three different buyers at Waitrose, plus the people at Ocado,' says Graves, ‘but it's tremendously exciting.‘We're also now in Tesco and Sainsbury's and feeding 25,000 kids a week in the UK. We had sales of nearly £1m last year and are hoping to do about £4m this year.'

Soon, the figure will be 25,001 as Graves gave birth to Monty, her first child, four months ago. ‘He can eat fromage frais at six months and ours is the only one that I'll be feeding him,' she says. ‘All our success is down to Ocado and Waitrose. Every product we've launched has been launched there and the shops have really complemented the online offering. It's a really great relationship for us.''