Perween Warsi arrived in the UK from India in 1976 with a young family and a fierce love of home cooking. A decade later, frustrated by the poor-quality Indian food on supermarket shelves, she set out to change the nation’s palate. In 1986 she launched S&A Foods from her own kitchen in Derby with just £2.50, a bag of flour, potatoes, onions and oil. Her goal was ambitious: she wanted the whole country to enjoy authentic, high-quality Indian food.

“I started with £2.50, a bag of flour, a bag of potatoes, onions and some oil.”

By the early 2010s, S&A Foods had grown into one of the UK’s largest chilled Indian food manufacturers, supplying own-label and branded products to major supermarkets including Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Waitrose, as well as wholesalers and distributors across the UK and Europe. At its peak the Derby-based business employed hundreds of people and supplied products across the UK and Europe. Warsi’s work helped transform Indian food from a restaurant treat into an everyday supermarket staple.

Her contribution was recognised in the 2012 Queen’s Birthday Honours, when she was appointed CBE for services to the food industry and charity. Companies House filings show that S&A Foods (Derby) Ltd later entered administration in 2016 and ceased trading in its original form. Despite that, the operational lessons from its growth remain highly relevant to women entrepreneurs starting and scaling food businesses today.

“When I came to England there was nothing available and I lived on cauliflower, peas and potatoes. In the 1980s I saw some so-called Indian food on the market and I tasted them and it was just the taste, we could not eat it. I bought some samosas and the pasting was soft, it did not have enough filling, there were not enough spices. It was not samosas like my mum would make. I was very disappointed so I wanted to put the quality right,” Perween recalls.

That determination to challenge the status quo drove the business forward. “When I started from my own kitchen I started with £2.50, a bag of flour, a bag of potatoes, onions and some oil. That’s how it started and I came up with the idea by myself and I wanted the whole nation to enjoy my food and here we are now. We are quite a good size company, we employ 100 to 500 people in the business that has been with me for quite some time and it’s a great business. We supply products to supermarkets, wholesalers and distributors in England as well as in Europe,” she said.

The ‘Curry Queen’ explains that the key to her success was a strong will to succeed and an insistence on delivering a quality product to UK consumers: “I like challenging the status quo and I believe if people wanted to eat Indian food they really want to enjoy the food because Indian cuisine is so wonderful. So I set myself out to put that right and the challenge was that I can do it on a small scale but how do you do it when you up the scale of everything. My vision from day one was seeing the whole nation enjoying my food and that is what I wanted to do.”

Challenge one: perfect the product

It was not all smooth sailing for S&A Foods, with two major challenges causing problems en route to success. “My first challenge was to make onion patty, believe it or not. When I went to pitch for a small business they would love all the food but what they did not get from me was onion patty because I had never seen onion patty in my life and I spent a couple of weeks trying to make it.

“It kept on being a disaster, they would either be burnt outside and raw in the middle or get cooked but be oily, it was all kinds of disasters. I was so determined to perfect it and I honestly don’t think I will ever eat so much onion patties in my life as I ate in those two weeks. But I got it right and it became a fantastic seller.”

Challenge two: manage your costs

She continues, “My second challenge was, after winning business from the supermarket, we moved into a small unit in the industrial estate and we were growing rapidly. Every day the orders were increasing and being passionate about the product and consumers, these two were our focus, so let’s get the best quality food out of the factory and let’s not short our customers. We were so engrossed in those two criteria and key performance indicators that we took our eye off the cost.

“For a couple of weeks we kept running out of onions. The onions went into two products, pakoras and onion patties. The patties were doing very good, the ladies were making it, there were no problems and it was absolutely to the weight. So I followed through the process, got into the filling area and I realised the boys and girls were packing 10 to 12 grams extra in each pack. It’s not their fault, they were doing it simply to get the orders out because the orders were sky high. That was where the problem was, so what I learnt was sales at any cost was not a clever strategy. You have to manage your costs,” Perween notes.

With such a keen eye for business she reveals that several other pioneers have earned her respect and inspired her: “Who would not have admired Steve Jobs. What a visionary. What a brilliant brain. He had the eye for beauty, he realised computers, mobile phones don’t just have to be functional, they can also be beautiful. He challenged the norm, what a brilliant person and what a great loss. I also admire James Dyson who is an inventor, because he keeps bringing something new and inventive to the market, making life easier and saving cost,” says Perween.

What Perween Warsi teaches women founders today

Warsi’s experience offers a practical blueprint for women entrepreneurs in the UK food sector. The Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship, commissioned by HM Treasury in 2019, estimated that closing the gender entrepreneurship gap could add up to £250 billion to the UK economy. Progress reports from the review highlight that women remain under-represented among UK business founders, showing how much room remains for founders like Warsi to build and scale.

Women starting food businesses in 2026 can access targeted support. The Start Up Loans Company, backed by the British Business Bank, provides government-backed loans and mentoring for early-stage founders, while the Women Backing Women Fund and sector bodies such as the Food and Drink Federation offer further routes to capital and advice. Food founders should also check local growth hubs and women-focused grant programmes.

Action steps for food founders

• Test your product relentlessly before scaling. Warsi spent two weeks perfecting one item before taking it to buyers.
• Watch your unit costs as closely as your sales figures. Extra grams per pack can wipe out margin when volumes grow.
• Stay on the factory floor or kitchen line. Problems show up in production before they appear in accounts.
• Use available support: check your eligibility for Start Up Loans, local growth hubs and women-focused funding.
• Keep your vision specific. Warsi wanted the nation to enjoy her food, not just to run a business.

Perween Warsi’s journey shows that a clear vision, an obsession with quality and a ruthless focus on costs can take a business from a kitchen table to national supermarket shelves. Even though S&A Foods is no longer trading in its original form, the lessons of the ‘Curry Queen’ continue to resonate with founders building food businesses today.