Foodie entrepreneur seeks slice of Kenya’s hot sauces market

Koech, as he is fondly called by those who know him, is at his happiest when people enjoy his food. This level of fondness for flavour presented a challenge to him in 2020 in the form of a question. “How hot can chilli get?”

He went fishing for information; a rabbit hole he kept going deeper and deeper. Several TV shows and countless website pages later, he discovered that the hotness of chilli is not universal. Rather, it can be graduated into different degrees, more specifically, Scoville units.

Enter Habanero chillis. On the Scoville scale, they score a staggering 100,000 to 350,000 units.

“I found out that the African Bird’s Eye Chili, which is perennial in Kenya, measures between 50,000 to 100,000 Scoville units, I wanted something more interesting, hotter, and one that I could use to make a hot sauce that enriches my food more,” he says.

“Flavour is essential in the whole ecosystem of food. Some people even say that it is the essence of food, and as someone who loves making good food, this was a worthwhile discovery.”

Koech had started meat smoking for friends and family the same year. Meat smoking is an ancient way of cooking meat by exposing it to smoke. The hot sauce would, therefore, be an important addition to his cooking experience.

He started by finding the Habanero chillis locally. The largest producer of the habanero pepper is Mexico.

“I bought two kilos from a farm I found down at the Coastal region for my first D-I-Y ‘manufacturing’ process of the hot sauce,” he tells Lifestyle.

That cost him Sh1,000 and was only meant for his family’s consumption and when he hosted his friends for cookout sessions. He used a home kitchen blender, adding ingredients like tomatoes and fennel seeds to enrich the hot sauce. This process was rudimentary, he recollects. The jugs he used were not airtight. This interfered with the integrity and quality of the final product.

“My hot sauces are prepared by fermentation; this requires anaerobic environments, which the jugs did not provide,” he says. While the first consumers of the product were receptive and wanted him to make more and sell to them, Koech believed there was still room for improvement.

“I felt like the first serving was too hot, even for people who appreciate flavour like I do,” he says.

He bought airtight containers when his jugs exploded from the building pressure from the collecting gas resulting from the anaerobic process. He would later take breaks in the fermenting until 2022, when he commercialised the product under the name Fiery Funk.

Having established the right ratios, having ready clients was the easy part. It was the packaging that would run into him like a boulder. 

“I got a local supplier for the bottles that sold one piece at Sh500. He had set the retail price at Sh1,000. He only did 20 bottles for his first commercial production. At this rate, the overheads would render the business unsustainable.”

Not one to give up easily, he looked east—China. “I found manufacturers selling the same bottles at Sh15 to Sh20 this would lower my production cost by more than Sh400 per unit. For many new businesses, overheads remain a headache because not all enjoy economies of scale. Any opportunity to cut costs is welcome and must be pursued.”

His first clients were his friends, those who understood his passion and the efforts put into production.

“Starting a small business is a labour of love. Starting with a product whose competition are products sold by international manufacturers that have been around for ages is not easy,” he says.

Koech’s first major investment in terms of money was Sh90,000. An amount he used to purchase 10,000 bottles from China. He also started growing his own Habanero chillies on his farm in Londiani.

His is a niche product, he says.

“I target ‘foodies,” he says, “those who discern flavour and want to experience all their taste buds come alive. I also partner with gourmet restaurants like Nifty in Limuru, which use Fiery Funky as their main hot sauce.”

A career marketer in the FMCG sector, a majority of his products are sold at his weekend meat-smoking outings. His meat-smoking cookouts can draw over 2,000 people on a weekend.

Koech relies on social media to market and sell his products.

“I have the advantage of being a career marketer. This being what I do for a living, pushing the products into the market is not difficult,” he says.

He sells between 500 to 600 bottles every month.

“I could say the market is receptive, and people are beginning to appreciate homegrown products in the food environment. However, it is a waiting game. Without a big name, you work extra hard to earn people’s trust. I am lucky because people know me for meat smoking; it is therefore easy for them to trust me with a product like this. Besides, when they come for the meat, they can always put the product to test.”

Having his products in large stores is a long-term plan for the business. 

“The challenge for small businesses having their products in large retail stores is cash flow. If you tell me that you will make quarterly payments, for example, I will have to wait for those three months to start another production cycle, which is not good for my business. So, yes, we want to scale up by getting a 200-litre fermenter and a 200-litre pasteuriser, injecting more capital into the business to make it more resilient so that delayed payments do not stop operations altogether.”

His key lessons in the transition of Fiery Funk from a hobby to a commercial product include resilience and the ability to bounce back after losses.

“You have to know how to lick your wounds and get back on your feet. I have made losses in the processes. But they have not prevented me from reinventing myself every time I fall,” he says.