I made a pot from pate

Margaret Carter hit her lowest point a few years after her divorce. Penniless and desperate, she had to feed her three children with scraps provided by the friendly cook at a local restaurant.

"I used to get a binbag of carcasses to make soups," she explains. "It was a struggle."

A chronic dyslexic with no academic qualifications, Margaret had spent years doing "anything to make ends meet", including selling handmade paper flowers, starting her own knitwear business (when she couldn't knit) and making jam.

But at the very depth of her despair, Margaret hit on the idea that would make her millions.

The turning point came when that same friendly cook suggested she should produce home-made pate for the restaurant in North Wales. "I leapt at the chance," she says. "I borrowed pounds 9 from the housekeeping and set to work. My first pate, if I remember rightly, was brandy and herb."

From this modest start in 1984, Margaret's venture grew into a company which supplies upmarket pates, quiches and pies to some of Britain's most discerning palates. Patchwork Traditional Foods now turns over pounds 500,000 a year and Margaret lives in luxury in a splendid Victorian hunting lodge.

It hasn't been an easy ride. Though her original pates were a big hit, the restaurant soon fired her and made their own. "Confident though I am, I panicked," she recalls. But within days she produced more samples, loaded them into her car and drove to the nearest town. Soon, the orders were pouring in.

"Then it grew and grew and I've done the same thing for 12 years. What we did that first day, we still do now, only on a bigger scale."

At the end of the 1980s, Margaret had to shift production from her own kitchen to a nearby industrial estate. But even today, Patchwork employs just 12 people, including her son Rufus, 26 (her other children are Marcus, 31, and Gina, 30). And the business runs to her own philosophy of empowerment. "My people decide when they go to work," she explains. "Last year they wanted to start at 7am and finish at 3pm so they could have a better quality of life, which was wonderful."

She even threatens to dock people's pay if they stay late. "I say, 'Go home and make love to your partner. Don't waste your time here'."

Margaret, now 53, knows how to enjoy her wealth after those early years of hardship. Her idea of a good time is champagne, caviar, a house crammed with friends (it sleeps 22) and shopping jaunts to Harvey Nichols in London. There's a pinball machine in her living room and a flotation tank in her bathroom.

She says she's not driven by a need for possessions, but has just treated herself to a pounds 48,000 Range-Rover that she calls "an orgasm on wheels". It's black and shiny with a cream leather interior and "every twiddly bit that God invented" including an 11-speaker CD system.

Her customers are more used to seeing her in a beaten-up Volvo and she fears they might link her new wheels to the amount she charges for her products (a 10-inch pie, for instance, can cost up to pounds 17.95).

"It's difficult," she says. "I have to be careful in case people get jealous."Even if they do, it's unlikely to get her down too much. "I'm a very positive person," she says. "And I'm very upfront with people. I've made myself special. I've created myself."

HOW SHE MADE IT

NAME

Margaret Carter, 53

WHAT MADE HER

A MILLIONAIRE?

Her company makes upmarket pate, quiches and pies.

SO WHAT'S SHE WORTH?

The firm is valued at pounds 1.5 million and has an annual turnover of pounds 500,000. Customers include Harrods and Fortnum & Mason. Her employees set their own hours . . . and she threatens to dock their pay if they work late.

FORMER LIFE?

Born in Chile, she married an architect and had three children after her family returned to Britain. After divorce and many failed business ventures, she was on the breadline until she started making her own-recipe pates for a local restaurant.

Copyright 1996 MGN LTD
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.