Africa Side Hustle: Turning Passion for the Kitchen into Profit [0:00-5:01]

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 shifts, 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 Ann Osborne alongside entrepreneur and Wakanda Food Accelerator founder Miles Kubeger. Welcome to Africa side hustle to the both of you. It's actually rare to actually have 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 state essay as well as with that now, paint me the current picture on how the food industry is like, especially with the high cost of living that we're actually experiencing. So I think the food industry is definitely struggling at the moment. Yeah. I think chefs are trying to find, and restaurant tales are trying to find creative ways to kind of get around all the increases that we've seen in just the last six months has been quite hectic. I've definitely seen it in my restaurants. But you know, I think just that farm to table cooking is becoming more of a thing. Using the whole product is becoming a thing, you know, knows to tell cooking. They call it root to vegetable cooking. Yeah, so just like creative ways to use a whole animal, a whole vegetable, whatever it is. With the current state of living that we're 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? 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, was with some economists and they're telling me that the last ship that left the straight of her moves only arrived at destination about two weeks ago now. So up till now, we haven't had felt the full impact of what's happening in the Middle East, and food is mostly impacted by that, because all the input costs, so packaging comes from oil, so plastic comes from oil. Fertilizer comes from the same, so farmers are farming less because there's not enough fertilizer. So all that does is just pushes the cost of food up. So what does the reality is like in terms of starting a food business? I mean, I think the one cool thing about a food business is that firstly, it requires patience, 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 shade 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 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. Yeah. And Kayla, you're a chef. Can actually one be a chef as a side hustle, and how do you make it sustainable? So I have also, I think the only way to get through this is like home hustles, so it's home based hustles. So something like just that I've started doing at home is growing mushrooms for the restaurant, but also to sell to our customers, they love mushrooms, and I think there's more cooking at home happening. Yeah. People can't afford to eat outside, 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 made sauce, or mushrooms, or a well-booted 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 that come, you know, at the moment filling my restaurant with home based hustles. Yeah. And then also with that now, what were some of the biggest challenges, actually, to be in the food business? So I think, 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's 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 process, and it's just going to get worse and worse and worse, and I think you're going to