Product Update

Is Sweet Mandarin Still in Business? (2026 Update)

Is Sweet Mandarin from Dragons’ Den still around in 2026? The deal it made, the dragons who invested, and where to buy Sweet Mandarin today.

Dragons' Den IndexUpdated 23 April 20266 min read

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Sweet Mandarin turned a family restaurant recipe into a bottled sauce range with backing from two Dragons at once, and the business has held up well. If you are asking whether Sweet Mandarin is still in business, the answer is yes, and the underlying restaurant behind the brand is still serving in Manchester today.

The Short Answer

Sweet Mandarin is still trading. The award-winning Manchester restaurant that inspired the sauce range remains open, with only routine seasonal closures rather than any sign of the business winding down.

The sauce brand itself went on to land national supermarket listings and international export deals in the years after its Den appearance, which is a stronger outcome than most food and drink pitches manage.

The Pitch

Twin sisters Helen and Lisa Tse brought Sweet Mandarin to Series 10, Episode 3, pitching a range of Oriental dipping sauces built on their grandmother's recipes and inspired by the family's Manchester restaurant of the same name.

They asked for £50,000 in exchange for 40 percent of the company, aiming to fund a move from restaurant-only sales into wider retail distribution.

A key part of the pitch was the sauces being gluten free, nut free and free from artificial colourings and preservatives, at a time when allergy-friendly Chinese food was genuinely hard to find on UK supermarket shelves. That gap in the market, combined with the family's existing restaurant reputation, gave the sisters a credible story for why bottled versions of their sauces would sell beyond the restaurant's own tables.

The Deal That Got Done

Duncan Bannatyne offered £50,000 for the 40 percent stake on the table, and Hilary Devey matched him. Rather than choosing between the two, the sisters took both Dragons on board, splitting the equity 20 percent each in exchange for the full £50,000.

That structure gave Sweet Mandarin two experienced retail and business figures backing it at once, doubling the network the sisters could draw on as they pushed into supermarkets.

Splitting a single equity stake between two competing Dragons rather than picking one is a fairly unusual outcome for the show, and it reflects how much both Bannatyne and Devey wanted in on the pitch rather than being willing to walk away and let a rival take the whole deal.

What Happened After the Den

The backing paid off. Sweet Mandarin's gluten-free, nut-free and dairy-free sauces went on to secure listings in around 500 Sainsbury's stores, along with a spot on the shelves at Ocado.

The brand went further still, signing an export deal worth £6 million over five years into China during a trade visit that coincided with a Prime Ministerial delegation, plus additional markets including Russia, Switzerland and Germany. The sisters were also recognised with New Year's honours off the back of the business's growth.

The Restaurant Behind the Sauce Brand

Sweet Mandarin the restaurant predates Sweet Mandarin the sauce brand by years. Helen and Lisa Tse, along with their family, built the Northern Quarter restaurant around recipes passed down from their grandmother, and it earned a strong local reputation in Manchester well before the sisters ever appeared on television.

That restaurant is what makes this pitch a bit different from a typical Dragons' Den food and drink story. The sauces were always an extension of an existing, proven business rather than a stand-alone product idea, which likely helped the pitch land two Dragons at once. It also means the brand had a genuine fallback: even if the retail sauce push had stalled, the restaurant itself had its own independent, long-running customer base to lean on.

Where Things Stand Now

Sweet Mandarin pitched in Series 10 asking for £50,000 for 40 percent, and left with exactly that after Duncan Bannatyne and Hilary Devey split the stake between them.

The restaurant in Manchester's Northern Quarter is still operating, and the sauce brand carries a genuine track record of major retail and export deals since the show. Of the Series 10 food pitches, this is one of the clearer ongoing successes.

Between the joint-Dragon investment, the supermarket listings, and the international export deal signed alongside a Prime Ministerial trade delegation, Sweet Mandarin ticks nearly every box that marks out a genuine post-Den success story. It is also a good example of how a pitch built on a real, already-loved restaurant tends to have sturdier foundations than a product dreamed up specifically for the show.

Where to buy Sweet Mandarin

Still selling as of 23 April 2026. Check today's price and availability.

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See the full Sweet Mandarin deal breakdown and term sheet →