Africa Side Hustle: Turning Passion for the Kitchen into Profit

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:07][music] [music] >> As the cost of living continues to rise and food prices put pressure on households, many South Africans are looking for creative ways to make ends meet. And for some, that journey starts in the kitchen. From home cooks to street vendors and aspiring chefs, the food industry is becoming a powerful gateway to income and opportunity. But how do you turn a passion for cooking into a sustainable business? Now, to help us unpack this, we're joined by award-winning chef Kayla and Osborne alongside entrepreneur and Wakanda Food Accelerator founder Miles Kubheka.

[00:00:47]Welcome to Africa Side Hustle.

[00:00:50]To the both of you.

[00:00:51]>> [laughter] >> It's actually rare to actually have uh two guests on the show. And just to start with you, Kayla. I mean, like South Africa is experiencing a high cost of living. I mean, like CPI went up to 4% from Stats SA as well. As with that now, paint me the current picture on how the food industry is like, especially with the high uh cost of living that we actually experiencing.

[00:01:16]>> So, I think the food industry is definitely struggling at the moment.

[00:01:19]>> Yeah.

[00:01:20]>> I think chefs are trying to find and restaurateurs are trying to find creative ways to to kind of get around all the increases that we've seen in just the last 6 months has been quite hectic.

[00:01:29]>> Yeah.

[00:01:29]>> Um I've definitely seen it in my restaurants. Um but yeah, I think just that uh farm-to-table cooking is becoming more of a thing. Using the whole product is becoming a thing, you know. Um nose-to-tail cooking, they call it root-to-root-to-vegetable cooking. Yeah, so just like creative ways to use a whole a whole animal, a whole vegetable, whatever it is.

[00:01:48]>> With the current state of living that we actually experiencing here in South Africa, paint us a picture. How is the food industry looking like? Is it sustainable? Is it the right time actually to start a food business?

[00:02:00]>> I mean, is there ever a right time, I guess. But one thing I will say, and I hate saying this, but it's going to get even more rough.

[00:02:09]Was with some economists and they were telling me that the last ship that left the Strait of Hormuz only arrived at destination about 2 weeks ago now. So up till now, we haven't had felt the full impact, right, of what's happening in the Middle East. And and food is mostly impacted by that, right? Because all the input costs, so packaging comes from oil. So plastic comes from oil.

[00:02:33]Fertilizer comes from the same So farmers are farming less because there's not enough fertilizer. So all that does is just pushes the the cost of of food up.

[00:02:43]>> So what does the reality is like in terms of starting a food business?

[00:02:47]>> I mean, I think the one cool thing about a food business is that firstly, it requires passion, right? So if you love what you do, it's not so hardcore. But the fact of the matter is there's input costs. There's all these things. So even if you're cooking from home, there's certain things you can't avoid. So now we've got dark kitchens, for example. So it's a shared kitchen space that you can cook from and supply your food to the delivery apps. But if the price of the bike, because it needs fuel, is going up, it means, you know, the the selling price of the food goes up, which decreases the demand. So again, tough times, but it's also an amazing opportunity. I think never waste a good crisis. The trick is just finding what the right product under the circumstance will be.

[00:03:35]>> Yeah. And Kayla, you're a chef. Can actually one be a chef as a side hustle?

[00:03:40]And how do you make it sustainable?

[00:03:43]>> So I have also I like I think the only way to get through this is like home hustles, hey? So it's home-based hustles. So something like just that I've started doing at home is growing mushrooms.

[00:03:53]>> Yeah.

[00:03:53]>> For the restaurant, but also to sell to our customers. They love mushrooms. And I think there's more cooking at home happening. People can't afford to eat out, but they are still very critical of what they're eating. So, they're buying good produce and they're eating at home instead. So, I think if you can kind of supply that home market a little bit, whether it be a good meat source or mushrooms or well-butchered piece of meat or good vegetables, I think there's definitely a market homemade pasta. There's definitely a market somewhere in the middle there. But it's definitely home-based hustles. Like I'm, you know, at the moment filling my restaurant with home-based hustles.

[00:04:26]>> Yeah. And then also with that now, what were some of the biggest challenges actually to be in that in the food business?

[00:04:34]>> So, I think, um, you know, the overheads of a restaurant are dramatic. Like they are insane. There's no other way to get around that at the moment. So, I mean, you know, within my chef school even we're trying to teach home-based skills, being able to start a business from home. Something you can do at home that's easy and accessible to start and you can grow. And I think we obviously, like Miles says, we're going to just see rising prices and it's just going to get worse and worse and worse. And I think you're going to have to kind of find like a a middle ground of producing things at home. I can't see another way that we're going to survive.

[00:05:09]>> Where do we start and how much?

[00:05:11]>> The best place is to start where you've got, um, control. Home, right? Start cooking or baking. Um, I can blow you away with some of the things we see, like entrepreneurs just selling scones.

[00:05:23]I can't tell you how big that as a business. I mean, we have a, um, one lady, um, who sells, who makes and sells atcha. She wakes up at 5:00 a.m. By 10:00 a.m. she's done. She works at a taxi rank selling the atcha.

[00:05:37]>> Yeah.

[00:05:38]>> She makes 3 and 1/2 thousand rands in that 5 hours every day.

[00:05:42]>> Every day.

[00:05:43]>> Did you know that 45% of, um, South Africa's, um, mangoes end up as achar.

[00:05:50]So, the point is there's so many amazing opportunities when you know, but what I find a little bit challenging is that then people all do the same thing. If I can tell you if I see one more chili sauce no offense to people who are making chili sauces, but you know, instead of chili chili sauce, maybe make a chili oil. Like go a little bit north of center, you know what I mean?

[00:06:13]Don't do what everybody else >> is doing. But the opportunities are definitely there and you can do them from home.

[00:06:18]>> Where do you get the funding?

[00:06:20]You know, you have to build the funding, unfortunately.

[00:06:23]There's not a lot of funding happening.

[00:06:25]I mean, the economy's tight. No one's giving money away. But I I and I often have students talk to me about this, but I strongly suggest, you know, if you start with 100 rand and you bake five loaves of bread, you need to be disciplined enough to put some of that towards growing the business, some of that towards paying for your next set of ingredients.

[00:06:45]Um so, I think it's really important in terms of budgeting. Whether it's 100 rand or 1,000 rand you start with, it's just having the um discipline to put things aside to make sure you can grow the business.

[00:06:56]It's actually it's more a financial thing than anything else. It's looking at, okay, I got 2,000 rand out of that 1,000 rand that I put in today.

[00:07:03]Where am I going to put it to grow my business?

[00:07:05]>> Sure.

[00:07:05]>> And I mean, just to add on to that, your your best investor is your first customer.

[00:07:11]>> Yeah.

[00:07:11]>> Right? And and it's often overlooked.

[00:07:14]And the trick to that is man, you've got you've got cousins. If pull together something and commit to them that listen, when this comes off, you're an equity partner or I will pay you in so you can pull resources, but the trick about that is just get version one going. And a lot of people think and they paralyze themselves from starting because they're already thinking too big. Um the best way I can put it, my mom says it best. She says, "If you're stuck on the side of the road, no one will stop to help you. If you stuck on the side of the road, you get out of the car and you start pushing your own car. You'll be surprised to see how many people stop and help." People will only help you when they see demonstrable evidence that you've at least tried.

[00:07:56]>> When you help yourself.

[00:07:57]>> When you help yourself, yeah.

[00:07:58]>> Yeah. And also, Miles, I mean, like in the township economy, there's a lot of informal businesses. And mostly, they are also into the food market. So, how do you sustain that business to be formal?

[00:08:09]>> So, this is a subject I'm particularly passionate about because, as you know, about 2024, 23 kids died from eating food from spaza shops, right?

[00:08:20]And and we work on a business model called Twalisa, where you buy food. It's a refinery model. You come with this cup tin and you say, "I want 135 of flour." And we we decant it. So, we've always been super conscious about health and safety. So, what I can tell anybody, even if you're cooking from home, or you're selling scones on the side of the road, health and safety is super important. So, we built a tool with the UNDP called Spaza Misa. And it's a it's on a cell phone. It's literally free.

[00:08:55]And you can go around your kitchen, or your spaza shop, or your kota shop, and it will tell you if your shop meets the health and safety requirements using AI vision. It is so cool. And but the point of it is that it costs you nothing. And then automatically, you can create and make sure that your space, at the very least, is is safe for your consumers to eat your food.

[00:09:18]>> How important is it to create employment within the business?

[00:09:23]>> I think the only way the economy comes right is through employment.

[00:09:27]The more unemployment there we have, the worse things are going to get. But I also I really like that kind of we all have a cousin, you know? So, maybe it's not employment we need to start focusing on and it is um small term entrepreneurship we need to start focusing on. You know, if there's no jobs, there's no jobs at the moment, but there's nothing stopping you from starting something yourself. We need to stop waiting for this handout of a job and someone to give us something. We need to get up and get on with it.

[00:09:54]>> Mhm. How important is social media, especially when coming to expanding and also the knowledge in terms of the food industry that you actually do?

[00:10:04]>> Sure. Tough times are also an amazing opportunity. We would have never seen the opportunity to start Qwalisa the refillery shop if it wasn't for COVID. I wouldn't have realized that there's a need, but COVID made it put it in front of my face that hey, hang on, people are starving. 19 million South Africans go to bed hungry every day.

[00:10:24]Every pack size must start at a certain point, but some people just have a little bit of money in their pocket. Why Why can't we sell food based on the amount of money you have?

[00:10:32]>> Yeah.

[00:10:32]>> Massive opportunity I wouldn't have seen. So, as much as things are tough, use it as an opportunity. And social media is also an amazing lever that can take you from an unknown brand or an unknown story and someone and in fact that's actually what happened to us.

[00:10:50]Panyual was walking in in in Alex and he saw it Qwalisa. He was like, what is this? And and he he filmed it on his phone and that thing went viral. It changed our business, but no amount of virality, if we hadn't built it, there's nothing to make viral.

[00:11:07]>> Are side hustles actually becoming a necessity into the South African economy?

[00:11:13]>> Oh, yeah. I think side hustles are a a necessity world over. I've traveled the world and I can tell you almost everywhere in the world everybody is working two or three jobs.

[00:11:22]>> Yeah.

[00:11:23]>> Right? Um but my recommendation, find a side hustle that you are passionate about, then it's not a graft. It's something it's almost like a hobby that pays you.

[00:11:31]>> What gives you hope about, you know, South Africa's uh food industry?

[00:11:36]>> I think it's definitely the South African industry that gives me hope.

[00:11:39]When I see the products that are coming out and how innovative people are, that's what gives me hope. I I don't want to see copy and paste restaurants one after one. They are so boring, you know? I want to see new products. And also like what I feel we really lack again is our food culture here, our food identity. Like I want South African products, you know? I want amazing artisan products that come out of this country. You know, in Europe you have the most amazing cheeses and the most amazing cured meats and that Like I want that. I don't I don't I don't want to buy something off a supermarket shelf.

[00:12:11]>> Yeah. And that was award-winning chef Kayla Ann Osborn and Miles Kubheka, founder of Wakanda Food Accelerator, just sharing valuable insights on how on how South Africans or Africans can turn their passions into profit and build sustainable food businesses. Now, as we conclude today's episode, remember that Africa's entrepreneurial spirit is unstoppable. Turn your passions into profit and join the movement. Now, share your hustle story with us using #africasidehustle.

[00:12:41]And also, don't forget to subscribe for more entrepreneurial stories, business news, and insights on cnbcafrica.com.

[00:12:48]Till next week.