My Story

Hello my name is Phetcharee or just “Pesh” for short, creator of Mae Ja Thai Foods, a family run small business in the north west of England that creates REAL Thai cooking sauces for you to enjoy at home.

What does Mae Ja mean?
Mae Ja was created early 2023 and the company name "Mae Ja" comes from the name that I have always called my mother for as long as I can remember. I decided to name my brand of sauces Mae Ja because It was my mother who taught me how to cook delicious Thai food from a young age the traditional way.

Photo below of me and my mum :) 

Growing up
I was born in Pak Chong province (roughly 4 hours drive north of Bangkok) and this is where I grew up. After my early school years my family moved to the larger province of Nakhonratchassima (Nah-Con-Rat-Cha-See-Ma or simply called “Kolat” by Thai’s) We all moved to Kolat to search for the perfect location to start a successful family run food business.

Learning from the best
It was in Kolat during my early teens where I learned how to cook. Mae Ja ran and owned a successful hot food business cooking all the famous and tasty Thai favourites and I used to help out as much as I could.

Mae Ja taught me everything she knew about cooking and how to balance the flavours of sweet, spice, salt, sour and bitter. This was a lifelong apprenticeship of cooking until I eventually had the opportunity to move to the UK to start a family. And perhaps one day start a food business of my own.

Moving to the UK
I moved to Bolton, England in 2002 quickly finding my first real job working at a local pub. Naturally it wasn’t long before I began cooking Thai food to my newly acquired friends and family. After tasting my food, friends began complimenting my cooking and ideas started to come together around the dinner table on how I could earn a bit of money for myself selling my food.

My first business idea was to cook at peoples homes (come dine with me style) this was good for a while but the jobs were few and far between. After that, I began cooking large pans of my Thai curry and rice at home and sold it to several local pubs during quiz nights and other special events and gatherings. The food was always a hit and I got regular orders. Eventually I began renting unused pub kitchens on a semi permanent basis serving food to an ever growing clientele of people who enjoyed my cooking. This was my first real business and I loved it. But it wasn’t what I planned to do forever, I always wanted to create my own brand of Thai cooking sauces for EVERYONE to enjoy at home!

Photo below of me in my first commercial kitchen premises

Creating Mae Ja
It wasn't until March 2020 when I finally got the keys to my very own shop premises where I started up a hot food takeaway. This new premises had the kitchen facilities and the space I needed to finally put together the ideas for creating my brand of Thai sauces. Picking a name for my brand of sauces was EASY. There was only one name I wanted to use,  I just had to name the company after the hero in my life who taught me how to cook from the start, my mum “Mae Ja”

The Mae Ja plan!
Having travelled around the UK quite a lot as a tourist, seeing the sights and experiencing other places to visit, I quickly noticed there is a desperate shortage of GOOD quality Thai restaurants and Take Aways. Surprising when you learn that Thai food is quickly surpassing Indian as the nations favourite go-to spicy food of choice. I also found that good Thai ingredients were expensive and hard to find. This is what pushed me to create Mae Ja Sauces. I thought to myself that there must be some people out there who love Thai food but struggle to either find, cook or order Thai food from where they live.

All of the sauces I make are cooked to order, hot filled on our commercial kitchen premises and are shipped directly from our kitchen to yours.

Using my sauces guarantees delicious results every time. Mae Ja cooking sauce is REAL Thai food made by REAL Thai chefs, cooked by YOU at home. So why not plan your next Thai night with Mae Ja.