Spinach King
Spinach King is an agro-processing enterprise that aims to impact communities through its value chain. We pride ourselves in sourcing 100 percent of our ingredients and vegetables from local organic farms.
Spinach King Story
Spinach King’s story is a crazy one. It started in 2011 by Lufefe Nomjana in his neighbor’s kitchen. Lufefe fell in love with healthy living when volunteering at one of Khayelitsha’s community gardens. Spinach was a vegetable that really peaked his interest after he found out how easy it was to grow and how nutritious it was. He then looked around his community and noticed how much bread everyone was eating. This got him thinking: “hmm… why don’t I combine spinach and bread and change the way my community views health.” This was when the idea for the Spinach King was born.
With an idea in his head and R40 in his back pocket, he was on a mission to achieve royal heights. He approached his neighbor and asked if he could use her oven at night to try baking some bread. Her response: “Yes, as long as you’re out of the kitchen by early morning.” With his R40 capital, he started baking three loaves each night. In the day, he would go door-to-door selling his bread to his community. His initial business model worked around handing one loaf of bread out as samples and then selling the other two.
At this point, Lufefe knew he was onto something and wanted to equip himself with the right skills to slingshot him to his dreams. He enrolled at the Raymond Ackerman Academy of Entrepreneurial Development. Graduating in 2012, he now felt ready to take his business to the next level. He started baking at Spar in Khayelitsha and raised enough money to hire 5 employees that would use bicycles to deliver loaves of bread to people’s houses. This rocketed his business forward from 24 loaves of bread a month to 120.
In 2015, his dreams really started coming true when he was invited to showcase his products at the “We Feed the Planet” Expo in Italy. On top of this, Spinach King wins the Western Cape Premier’s Entrepreneurship Recognition Award for Best Emerging Agro-Processing Business. Then, just to sprinkle a bit more joy on top, Spinach King starts working alongside Virgin Active SA and cycles alongside Sir Richard Branson.
Fast forward to 2020, Spinach King is operating from two different outlets; one in Khayelitsha and another in Pinelands. The baking is still completely done in house and all the spinach is sourced from as local as possible. Spinach King’s ethos is all about encouraging a healthy lifestyle by empowering the communities in which it operates from. It’s a health revolution inspired by Kasi-living.
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