Helen and Lisa Tse became their family's third generation of restaurateurs when they opened Sweet Mandarin in Manchester in 2004. The restaurant won Gordon Ramsay's Best Local Restaurant on The F Word in 2009.

In 2012 the sisters appeared on BBC TV's Dragons Den and won a GBP50,000 investment to help them launch their range of Sweet Mandarin sauces, which they developed for their customers who suffer from coeliac disease. Since launching their range of sauces, which are stocked worldwide, they have been invited to Downing Street, and were awarded MBEs in the 2014 New Year Honours List for services to the food and drink industry.

They have published two cookbooks so far, Sweet Mandarin Cookbook and Dim Sum, and Helen is additionally the first ever British-born Chinese author, hailed as an up and coming literary talent for her memoir Sweet Mandarin which is distributed to 33 countries, listed as a Barnes and Noble Top 8 all time great reads and won her an honourary doctorate. It has been optioned for a feature film.