Local Village Foods
START-UP COSTS: ‘Initially, I invested less than R6 000. We’ve been fortunate to have been part of incubation programmes that included some funding, and to have won various start-up competitions.’
TURNOVER: ‘From our first year of trading we saw more than 100% annual growth, with the exception of the past two years, during which the business grew by about 60%.’
Inspired by the rich diversity of foods available on the African continent, Sipamandla Manqele has created a unique and accessible range of health foods featuring indigenous African ingredients.
Local Village Foods started trading in 2016. Tell us how it came about.
My business journey has been long and colourful! Local Village Foods started out selling freshly slaughtered chickens. I’d found a farmer in Mpumalanga who supplied these hard-bodied chickens that we grew up eating in Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape. I started selling them to a few friends, then to a restaurant in the city. Then I added things like free-range eggs from small-scale producers. At one point I was also
making granola in my kitchen. I changed our business model to focus on what Local Village Foods is known for today.
I’ve always been very business-minded, a trait I picked up from my mom. I registered my first business while I was in high school – a friend and I had a plan to manufacture toilet paper. The business didn’t succeed, but it gave me my first taste of entrepreneurship.
What sparked the idea for Local Village Foods?
I read books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Chinua Achebe, who wrote about eating things like yams and pepe. I hadn’t really been exposed to produce from other African countries. I began exploring African cuisine everywhere I travelled. The dishes were so rich and flavourful. African ingredients are seldom featured on the global banquet table. That’s how I got the idea: I wanted African wholefoods and superfoods to be as recognisable as every other type of cuisine.
What are some of the ingredients you use?
We source ingredients from smallscale producers all over Africa. Tiger nuts, which are in fact not nuts but tubers and are known to have been eaten in Ancient Egypt, are used for plant-based milk and as flour to make crunchy treats. Indigenous grains such as sorghum, fonio and teff can be enjoyed in savoury dishes or as porridge. We have developed a local version of bissap, which could be described as an ice tea made with hibiscus leaves. Our snack bars contain baobab powder, amaranth and moringa powder; and ancient African crops are used in our new tinned-food range.
What do you hope consumers take away from your brand?
We want consumers to experience the heart of our brand, which is simple really: making African wholefoods accessible, convenient and delicious. I hope people will start recognising the diversity and importance of African foods, and hopefully the narrative that African food is unhealthy will change. We want to introduce and reintroduce people to grain from Ethiopia and Benin, beans from Mali, and superfoods from Malawi and South Africa. We hope to achieve this by collaborating with various smallscale farmers who are growing these crops in different communities.
What has been your greatest reward so far?
Entrepreneurship is really miraculous. When you start a business, all you have is a dream and your imagination. Five or six years down the line, when you see how your portfolio has grown and how you’ve grown as a person… There is no greater reward than that feeling.
Your online store also features a blog. Why was it important to include that?
We wanted to create a resource for our customers to get to know the brand and understand our thinking and philosophy as an organisation, but also to inform them about how they can use these ingredients in their homes. We have recipes for tiger-nut rusks, roselle lollies, pasta dishes and salads, among others. ❖
‘I began exploring African cuisine everywhere I travelled.’