Sarah Willingham

Sarah Louise Willingham (born 21 December 1973) is a British entrepreneur, investor and consumer champion best known for her management of high-street restaurants such as Planet Hollywood and Pizza Express and her tenure as a "Dragon" on the thirteenth and fourteenth series of Dragons' Den.

Sarah Willingham
Born
Sarah Louise Willingham

(1973-12-21) 21 December 1973
Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, United Kingdom
NationalityBritish
Alma mater
OccupationBusiness entrepreneur, investor and personal finance expert
Net worth£12m
TelevisionThe Restaurant
Dragons' Den
Spouse(s)Michael Willingham-Toxvaerd (m. 2008)
Children4
Websitewww.sarahwillingham.com

Willingham bought the Bombay Bicycle Club in partnership with The Clapham House Group, expanding the restaurant chain from six locations to seventeen.

Education

Willingham has two business degrees from Oxford Brookes University[1] and the École supérieure de commerce de La Rochelle. In 2004 she completed an MBA at the Cranfield University School of Management.

Career

Businesses

Having spent the early years of her career managing some restaurants including Chessageed Delights,[2] Planet Hollywood and Pizza Express, Willingham decided to go it alone. In partnership with The Clapham House Group, she bought The Bombay Bicycle Club in 2004,[3] and expanded the company from six restaurant locations to seventeen, making it the largest Indian restaurant chain in the United Kingdom.[4] Willingham sold her share back to The Clapham House Group in 2007[5] where she continued as a main board director responsible for three of their four brands (Tootsies, The Real Greek and The Bombay Bicycle Club) with over 50 restaurants and more than 1,500 employees.[5]

In 2004, Willingham co-established an AIM-listed company, Neutrahealth plc,[6] which acquired six businesses in the vitamin and mineral supplements industry and was sold to Indian company Elder Pharmaceuticals Ltd in 2011.[7]

In April 2008, she helped co-establish a private equity platform in the UK.[8]

In 2010, Willingham invested in the London Cocktail Club. The first cocktail bar opened in 2011 on Goodge Street, London.[9] In February 2012 the London Cocktail Club added their second cocktail bar on Shaftesbury Avenue, Their third opened in Great Portland Street, London in 2013.[10] There are now eight bars with their latest opening in Bristol in September 2018 [11]

In July 2012, Willingham launched a money-saving website called letssavemoney, a free to use money saving website which aimed to help people take control of their time and be smart with their money, encouraging users to take action through one-minute guides to various aspects of money saving. With growing children and lack of editorial resource Sarah Willingham closed down Letssavemoney in 2018. [12]

Being a former owner of the Bombay Bicycle Club restaurant chain, she is recognised as an entrepreneur specialising in high street restaurants.

Management Today[13] and The Sunday Times acknowledged her as one of the "35 most successful women under 35" in the UK. In 2007 she was voted one of the "Courvoisier Top 500"[14] and American Express "Spokesperson for Small Business Saturday 2013".[15]

In January 2016, Willingham was named one of The Sunday Times' '500 Most Influential people in Britain'.[16] In 2017 Willingham received an honorary doctorate from Staffordshire University [17] and in 2018 she received honorary doctorates from Cranfield University [18] and Oxford Brookes University [19] in recognition of her outstanding contribution to business and entrepreneurship.

Television

Willingham was a restaurant inspector and investor on all three series of Raymond Blanc's The Restaurant and as an independent investor on the Sky television series Cooks to Market.[20][21] She has regularly appeared on various TV programmes, including Daybreak, This Morning, The Wright Stuff and Sky News.

In March 2015, Willingham was named as one of the new "Dragons" on the BBC television programme Dragons' Den from the thirteenth series which began airing in July 2015.[22] She returned to Dragons' Den for the fourteenth series, beginning in July 2016.

Her Dragons' Den investments include:

  • Vitiliglow – £40,000 for 40% equity
  • Sublime Science – £50,000 for 10% equity (joint investment with Nick Jenkins) - sold in September 2018 [23]
  • Grounded Body Scrub – £30,000 for 45% equity
  • Craft Gin Club – £75,000 for 12.5% equity
  • Cocofina – £75,000 for 20% equity (joint investment with Nick Jenkins)
  • Love Me Beauty – £80,000 for 8% equity (joint investment with Nick Jenkins)

In September 2016, Willingham took part in a celebrity episode of The Chase.

Personal life

Willingham and her husband Michael live in London and Switzerland with their four children.

gollark: I did want a PinePhone, but they are also not too production-ready.
gollark: A bunch of devices say stuff like "basically working! note: no battery, no charging" which is... no.
gollark: postmarketOS *looks* neat, but it does not seem production-ready.
gollark: If you go to some work you can run LineageOS or something with microG, and thus... not deal with the Google issue.
gollark: Well, I run android without google services, so meh.

References
  1. Willingham, Sarah. "Alumna returns to BBC Two for third series of The Restaurant". Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  2. "The Restaurant – The Inspectors". BBC. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  3. "Clapham House Grp – Acquisition – FE InvestEgate". investegate.co.uk. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  4. Nikkhah, Roya (11 October 2008). "Sarah Willingham: People need to change the way they eat". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  5. "FE Investegate -Clapham House Grp Announcements – Clapham House Grp: Trading Update and Placing". investegate.co.uk. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  6. "FE Investegate -AIM Announcements – AIM: Sch 1 – NeutraHealth plc". investegate.co.uk. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  7. "NeutraHealth bought by Elder". growthbusiness.co.uk. 17 September 2010. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  8. Jacobs, Emma (4 December 2011). "Interview: Chain reaction". Financial Times. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  9. "London Cocktail Club". Time Out London.
  10. "Oxford Circus – London Cocktail Club". London Cocktail Club. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  11. "Bristol". London Cocktail Club.
  12. "Biography |".
  13. Emma De Vita (1 July 2007). "MT's 35 Women Under 35 2007: Bright young things – Management Today". managementtoday.co.uk. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  14. "CVTF500 member list". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  15. Andrews, Amy (6 December 2013). "Shop local! Call to spend more in your High Street's independents as Small Business Saturday arrives". This is Money. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  16. "Britain's 500 most influential". The Sunday Times. 24 January 2016.(subscription required)
  17. University, Staffordshire. "Sarah Willingham". Staffordshire University.
  18. "Former Dragon and entrepreneur receives honorary degree". www.cranfield.ac.uk.
  19. "Inspirational Honorary Graduates for 2018 graduation ceremonies announced - Oxford Brookes University". www.brookes.ac.uk.
  20. "Cooks to Market". Sky Living HD. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  21. Willingham, Sarah (16 August 2012). "Kitchen commerce for Sky Living HD this September". Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  22. "Three new Dragons enter The Den for Series 13 – Media Centre". BBC. 18 March 2015. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  23. "Dragons' Den Winning Slime Making Experts, Sublime Science, Acquired by Hyphen Capital and Set to Take the Best of British Science to Children Around the World —".
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