From £55k Job to £1M Cheese Firm: Riya Patel's Success Story

STANDING in a Tesco aisle, Riya Patel could hardly believe what she was looking at – her own product on the UK’s biggest grocer’s shelves, with thousands selling every week. The 30-year-old ditched her stable £55,000 a year job and used £6,000 of her savings to start the business in 2024 – now it’s on track to make £1million. Here she explains how YOU could do the same. Advertisement Back in 2023, Riya, who lives in Hackney, East London, was working full-time for 37 hours a week as a policy advisor at the civil service earning £55,000 a year. But in her spare time, she was hosting supper clubs in her two-bed flat charging £70 for a seven-course meal, inspired by her Indian heritage. Her menus were full of dishes like curry leaf and mustard seed aioli, cashew daal and rose and pistachio tres leches. But there was one menu item that all her eaters raved about – the paneer cheese that her mum Sima, 60, had taught her to make. It became the most ordered and raved about item on her supper club menu. “People said they’d never had paneer like it. Paneer in the shops has always been hard to come by and when I did find some, it was hard and rubbery,” Riya said. “My recipes were barbequed and charred until the cheese was smokey and crispy on the outside and soft and tender inside. Guests were hooked and I realised I was on to something.” Advertisement Riya was also desperate for a career change and really wanted to work with food so decided to try to turn the paneer into a business. She thought paneer was a great option because the tasty cheese is a big hit with lots of people. Getting the family involved – and quitting their jobs Riya started working on the business in April 2024, while still working for the civil service. Her first step was to use £6,000 of her savings for research and development. She tested and sampled different paneer recipes, until she landed on the right recipe and texture, and also looked for the right manufacturing partner. The money also went towards securing sample packaging and paying an artist to create the brand’s quirky illustrations. In May 2024, she then cut her working hours to three days a week, so she could continue earning money while the business was in its early days. At a family barbecue in the summer of 2024, brother-in-law Jack Newton, 36, cheekily asked Riya who would take care of the business operations after she subtly dropped that she was in conversations with Tesco. Recognising the potential, Jack was quick to come on board. A few months later, he quit his job in South African social enterprise and then joined Riya full-time in December 2024. The previous month, Riya had quit her day-to-day job to focus solely on her company. Advertisement “I thought, ‘What have I really got to lose? I’ve got this great job, and if everything goes wrong, then I’ll just go back,'” she said. “The only thing worse would have been not trying.” Winning over the UK’s biggest supermarket chain After pitching samples of her homemade paneer at food conference Bread and Jam Festival in 2024 and winning, Riya was soon in hot demand. “It got us on the map and in front of people who were able to champion and support the launch of our product,” she said. This included the Start Up Summit where she got to pitch to Whole Foods, Selfridges and Macknade. She only had three minutes on stage, and it was so early on in their journey that they didn’t even have proper samples. Yet it was a success. Riya said: “There were no promises made on investment or listings but we did end up getting listed in all those retailers. “It also puts you on the radar of bigger national supermarkets.” Perhaps Riya’s biggest win, though, was getting Tesco on board, which she did through the retailer’s Accelerator programme. This provides support and mentorship to growing UK brands, stocking them in Tesco stores and online. It also offers access to a year of mentoring, learning and development, supported by a dedicated Tesco team. Advertisement The supermarket giant now stocks All the Aunties paneer – named after all the women in Riya’s family who love cooking – in 330 of its nearly 3,000 stores. From an initial £400 in monthly revenue last November, All the Aunties has soared to £40,000 a month, with estimates it’ll reach £1million this year thanks to several new retail contracts kicking in. The best of it all? Spending more time with family Riya now works over 50 hours a week, but despite that, spends more time with family as the business is so linked to the Patels’ culture and heritage. “It’s beyond my wildest dreams. It’s just insane,” says Riya. “I work harder than I ever have before, but you want to when you’re building something you really care about, and when you know there’s no one else who’s going to do it if you don’t. “That’s very freeing but also very stressful. But ironically whilst I party less I do see more of my family. “I’m really proud of us. It’s just me and Jack at the moment. It’s been crazy because when we launched in Tesco, he and my sister were about to have a baby, so it has been a wild ride. “My mum and family are the biggest supporters of the business and the best sales reps.” And despite friends and family being sceptical of Riya and Jack working together, Riya says it’s been brilliant as they complement each other with different skillsets. “He’s great at everything I’m poor at. We have overlapping personalities in the right way. We’ve known each other for 10 years so there’s an element of trust there,” says Riya. Advertisement Now, though, the business is in a place where Riya and Jack can hire their first official team member – and finally pay themselves salaries – as so far they’ve been living off savings. “We’re now taking salaries that we think the business can happily afford. It may be not quite what I had before, but I would like to get to that, because I’m hitting 30, and it’s really expensive to live in London,” said Riya. “Even thinking about getting on the property ladder when you own a business is really hard. “It’s one of those things that you think you’ll sacrifice when you try and start your own venture. “Whilst running the business is my priority right now, there is something about having those sorts of goals and objectives in mind.” The actual paneer making has now moved out of Riya’s kitchen and to a food manufacturing partner, which she said was not easy to find in terms of the quality and standard she wanted. She’s focused on developing new paneer variants beyond the three that are already for sale – original; cumin, chili and turmeric; and garlic and herb.