Enjoying the Taste

Chinese food proves to be a flavorsome hit in Kenya

while Chinese food is popular the world over, this has not always been the case in Kenya. However, recent growth in the online food delivery business has had a positive knock-on effect in the demand for this cuisine.

Six years ago, the first online Chinese food ordering service in the country was launched and, like all startups, the idea took time to take off.

“We started with six or seven orders and celebrated when we got to 20,” said Kent Kagicha, Marketing Manager of Yum Kenya. The platform now boasts more than 100,000 users and has grown into Nairobi’s premier food delivery service provider.

Jumia Food, launched a year after Yum, tells a similar story.

“We used to get 50-100 orders a day; but now we do 50 orders an hour,” said Shreenal Ruparelia, Managing Director of Jumia Food and Jumia Party. As orders increased on both platforms, so exponentially did the number of people eating Chinese food. In fact, in one Chinese restaurant using online delivery, results were instant.

Slow start

In the past, Chinese food in Kenya was mainly only eaten by the elite.

Tin Tin, one of the first Chinese restaurants in Nairobi, was established more than 40 years ago in the Central Business District (CBD). The restaurant was so exclusive that the first president of Kenya was among its regular patrons.

“When we started out, major corporate companies were located here and so there was a high concentration of restaurants,” said Jamie Pujara, Tin Tin’s business partner, who has both Chinese and Indian heritage. Many of their clients were corporate white-collar workers who would walk over for lunch and the upper middle class who would drive to town for dinner. Over the years, businesses have relocated from the CBD and many restaurants have followed suit. But Tin Tin didn’t go that route.

“After the corporates moved, we realized that very few people were going to brave the traffic to come to the CBD just to eat, so we changed our business model and started providing outside catering to various blue-chip companies,” said Pujara. The new strategy helped Tin Tin retain its niche market; however, it would be years before Chinese cuisine would trickle down to the ordinary Kenyan.

Reasons for popularity

The popularity of Chinese food in Kenya has been triggered by a combination of three factors.

First, in 1996, then Chinese President Jiang Zemin set out a five-point proposal of engagement between China and Africa. This triggered a steady influx of Chinese to the continent. Statistics show that more than 1 million Chinese live on the African continent as of 2017, compared with less than 160,000 in 1996. The figure has continued to rise annually. While some Chinese nationals have come here to work, the more enterprising ones came to start businesses - including operating restaurants - thus contributing to the accessibility of Chinese food in Nairobi.

Secondly, the ease of entry into the Kenyan food industry has encouraged Chinese entrepreneurs to venture into the restaurant business. As Kwame Owino, CEO of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a public policy think tank, explains, when foreigners want to establish restaurants, they are under the same stipulations as local Kenyans.

Thirdly, more Kenyans now than in the past have the capacity to eat out because they have disposable income. A study done in 2017 by global market research group IPSOS entitled African Lions Who Are Africa’s Rising Middle Class, says that there are 100 million middle-class people