Stoke-on-Trent-born businesswoman Sarah Willingham has told how she went from working on Stoke Market to owning the largest chain of Indian restaurants in the country and becoming one of the UK’s most successful female entrepreneurs and investors.
Sarah started her working life at the age of just 11 with a paper round, progressing to a job at a local hairdresser’s and later a market stall in Stoke when she was 13.
But the 47-year-old – who was born in the Potteries and raised in Newcastle-under-Lyme – admits that she quickly discovered her passion for the hospitality industry after taking a job at Gio’s bar on Newcastle High Street at 14.
Sarah said: “I’ve always really loved hospitality. I loved restaurants, loved the social aspect of it, and always found business really interesting.
“I was always quite interested in the commercial side of things, I didn’t really know necessarily that it was business that I was interested in, but I often wondered why we all wore the same brands and ate the same food and had the same stuff in our cupboards.”
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