Sweet Mandarin twins start new food service
FOOD TO CITY CENTRE WORKERS
THE sisters behind Sweet Mandarin, the popular Northern Quarter Chinese restaurant, have launched a new food delivery service.
Helen and Lisa Tse’s latest concept, Ziger Kitchen, is providing freshly cooked Pan-Asian street food delivered straight to your door.
Ziger, which launched last week, is aimed at office workers at busy lunch time periods, but will also be looking at eventually extending the service to other areas such as Trafford Park and Warrington. Lisa says: “I wanted to start a delivery only service through a Sweet Mandarin sub brand. We don’t open our restaurant at lunch time and this was a good opportunity to use that time for a new model that we can also scale up very quickly.
“Pan-Asian cuisine is also popular in Manchester and Mancunians want to be able to get healthy, fresh meals at affordable fixed prices.
“There’s half a million people working in the city centre and it’s a huge market for us.”
The current menu includes a range of dishes from ginger wok tossed beef slices with broccoli, sweet chilli chicken with pak choy, Musamman beef curry, and teriyaki chicken, to Szchewan fish infused with tomato sauce.
Prices range between £6.95 to £8.95 and there is a one-off delivery charge of £2.50.
Lisa says: “We have kept the menu simple and small, but again there’s potential to grow.
“We’ve only recently launched the business but have already had orders from the likes of Social Chain, Boohoo and Santander. We’re pretty confident it will take off very quickly.
“Our plans are to take the service to other areas of Manchester and we’re looking at partnering up with a delivery service.”
Helen and Lisa have both been awarded MBEs for services to the food and drink sector.
They are also behind Sweet Mandarin sauces, which are made in their Middleton factory and exported globally.
The past five years has seen continuous growth for the business after the sisters gained national exposure in 2012 when Dragons’ Den duo Duncan Bannatyne and Hilary Devey invested £50,000 as they looked to target export markets.