Food manufacturing excellence awards
Tse sisters
Twin sisters Helen (left) and Lisa Tse – the powerhouse behind the Chinese sauce brand Sweet Mandarin – have shot to international prominence after winning £50,000 backing from the TV programme Dragons Den only two years ago.
Along the way, Helen, director of the business and Lisa, its chief executive and head chef, have signed a lucrative export deal to supply their Chinese sauces to China and each collected a Member of the British Empire (MBE) award in this year’s New Year’s honours list.
Their rise to fame began when, in a bid to branch out from their Manchester restaurant, they persuaded the TV ‘dragons’ to back their gluten-free sauces early in 2012. The TV show proved their launch pad for their three monosodium glutamate free sauces supplied in three flavours: barbecue, chilli and sweet and sour.
In November 2012 they secured national listings for their Sweet Mandarin sauces in 500 Sainsbury stores across the UK, together with orders to supply Tesco and other outlets.
Fast forward to December last year and they won business worth more than £6M over the next five years to supply sauce to China, after they accompanied prime minister David Cameron on a trade mission to the country.
The sisters believe the prospects for sauce exports are vast. “The population of China is about 1.5bn but we reckon the target market for our sauces is about 600M to 700M people,” Helen Tse said December 2013. “So, it’s huge compared with the 77M consumers in the UK.”
Other developing export markets for Sweet Mandarin are Russia, Switzerland, Germany and the United Arab Emirates.
It’s an achievement that had not gone unnoticed in Whitehall. Their award of twin MBEs were for services to the food and drink sector. Helen admits to sending some sauce to HM the Queen last year and receiving a letter of thanks noting that Her Majesty thought they were very special. “Who knows, maybe that had something to do with it,” she said.