High Flying Sauce Sisters Add Kosher Certification To Their Success

1 November 2013

A highly successful food enterprise in the UK has achieved kosher certification from KLBD to help boost its success even further.

The company, Sweet Mandarin, is spearheaded by sisters Helen and Lisa Tse who have an army of devoted fans across the UK, including none other than the British Prime Minister, Gordon Ramsay and members of Dragon’s Den.

Their business is made up of a restaurant, a cookery school, book publishing, and marketing their own brand of sweet and savoury sauces. The sauces have achieved kosher certification from KLBD.

Sweet Mandarin is a family business that started in 1950 with a restaurant in Manchester city centre. In 2009 they beat 10,000 other eateries to win the Best Local Restaurant Award from the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay,who described Sweet Mandarin on his F Word Show as a “culinary jewel”.

This year the restaurant was awarded a rosette by the AA, the UK motoring organisation, in recognition of the excellence of its food, drink and service.

Although the sauces are kosher, the restaurant itself is not kosher certified.

What do you need to be successful in business? Whatever it is, Helen and Lisa have it in spades and if you could bottle it and sell it, like their Sweet Mandarin sauces, you would be a millionaire.

The idea of marketing the restaurant’s sauces came from a customer who wanted to be able to buy their sauces in bottles. Now Sweet Mandarin has a factory and supplies national supermarket chains like Sainsbury’s, Ocado, Tesco and Selfridges.

The sauces come in three styles: Barbecue, Sweet and Sour, and Sweet Chilli.

Helen Tse says: “We wanted to get kosher certified so that we could reach more customers. So we went to KLBD because they are a world authority in kosher issues. After the inspector’s visit, we were delighted to receive kosher certification for our factory and our range of sauces. Now our products are sold at Jewish delicatessens across the UK and in the kosher section in Tesco supermarkets.”

Helen Tse continues: “In addition to helping us in UK markets, we know that the kosher badge will enable us to do well in places like North America where there is a large Jewish population, plus consumers who seek kosher for medical reasons.”