Helen Colley founded what became one of the largest outside catering companies in the North West.  She went straight from school, she went on to build the hugely successful Farmhouse Fare brand, maker of premium hot puddings and chilled desserts. Despite huge challenges, Helen’s products were eventually stocked by almost every major supermarket in the country. In 2006, after just four years, Helen sold the business, in a multi-million pound deal.

Helen Colley set up her own outside catering company in 1984 from her parents’ farm in Gisburn, Lancashire, quickly building it into one of the biggest players in the business across the North West. However the foot and mouth crisis of 2002 introduced business-damaging travel restrictions and threatened to destroy everything she had worked for.

She was determined not to lose her business or make the sizable workforce that depended upon her, redundant. With a killer recipe for sticky toffee pudding up her sleeve, she diversified into desserts.

The fledgling idea grew into a thriving business, ranging across the cake and dessert sector; products which ended up on the shelves of supermarkets the length and breadth of the country, with many of them becoming category leaders.

Today Farmhouse Fare employs over 120 staff at a 85,000 sq ft custom-built, BRC A Grade-accredited site in Clitheroe, Lancashire.  Unsurprisingly her gung-ho, no-nonsense style, quickly made her a darling of the business world and caught the attention of the media. With that came numerous awards.