Dial-A-Dinner: I chased my dreams, tasted failure – but I’ve got back up

People will always eat, so the food industry is arguably one of the best places to set up a killer business.

With this in mind, at the age of 20, Stella Mutanu Abanga gave up a spot at United States International University (USIU) to pursue a career in the food industry. She got into it out of a love for cooking, but soon realised this was not enough to sustain a business.

After a few starts and stops, and small and major failures, Stella got back on her feet with her business, Dial-a-Dinner, a door-to-door gourmet food delivery service targeting gated communities and estates. Now 28, Stella speaks to Hustle about search for a viable food business.

You had a chance to study finance at USIU, why did you decline the offer?

Finance was something I chose because it was the norm. After high school, all my friends were going to university, so it was what was expected of me, but not what I wanted. On the day I was meant to go for orientation in campus, I just couldn’t do it. I approached my parents and told them I wanted to do something else. I didn’t want to waste their money for four years and then stick the degree in a drawer and never use it again.

Did they support your decision?

They were apprehensive at first, so I told them I was torn between going to a music or a culinary school. They picked the culinary school. Food made sense to them. My dad owns a resort, Athi Holiday Resort, which he has run for 15 years. So I suppose me being in the food industry was not farfetched.

What’s the first thing someone needs to do if they want to be a chef?

There are two paths. There are people who learn on the job, using their natural talent as a guide, and then there are people who are classically trained. In 2008, I chose the classical training route because I wanted to be versatile in the kitchen. I went to Top Chefs Culinary Institute, an international institute based in Switzerland. My training, however, took place in the Kenya campus. It was a two-year course.

What’s taught at a culinary institute?

Most people think food is just about the cooking, but food encompasses everything, from the production to the final meal on the table. We learn about the knives for different purposes, how to avoid cross-contamination, what temperature to store different foods at, what cuts of meat are used for which meals, how to draw up a menu, customer service. It’s a lot.

What’s the most important impact your training had on you?

I was blessed enough to do my internship at Serena Hotel in my first year and The Fairmont Norfolk in my second. The standards were amazingly high. A kitchen is busy, hot and fast. You have to focus. Sometimes you’re yelled at by the chef and you can’t go into a corner and cry or talk back. You do what you’re asked to do. My greatest takeaway, aside from the skills, was learning to function under pressure and having a healthy sense of humility.

How quickly did you get a job after you graduated?

I was called back to work at one of the hotels I’d trained in. When I did the calculations of the salary offered, it didn’t make sense. I understood I had to start at the bottom, but I figured if I’m going to earn such little money for such long hours, I might as well build my own business. I went into catering.

What was your first catering job?

I did a job for my mother’s friends who were having a house party. That was in 2011; not long after I graduated. I served 30 people and came away with Sh15,000. Since I was cooking from my kitchen, my start-up capital was Sh5,000, which I used for raw materials and some basic kitchen utensils. I was quite excited with the results.

What was the first year of your catering business like?

It was extremely good to begin with. I got a contract to serve food at a leading bank during a training programme they were undertaking. We would serve lunch and tea every day. We charged Sh1,200 per person and served five days a week. The contract lasted for six months, bringing us an approximate turnover of Sh1.2 million.

So there’s money to be made in food.

Oh, yeah. But there can also be some serious losses if you don’t do it right. I found this out the hard way when I opened a restaurant in Nairobi’s South C estate called Sweet and Savoury. We served breakfast, lunch and snacks. It was a big investment for me.

What was your capital?

I put in Sh150,000, which I had saved up during my contract with the bank. My monthly rent for the restaurant premises was Sh16,000. I had other overheads like electricity, water, salaries and so on. The restaurant brought in only about Sh15,000 a month. After eight months, we consistently ran at a loss and I had to make the difficult decision to close shop.

What would you say were some of the reasons for the restaurant’s failure?

I think I had bloated expectations. I had just come from making about Sh250,000 per month in my catering business, so I imagined the restaurant would fetch me similar figures.

But running an establishment is very different from outside catering, which was predominantly handled by my sister and I. I hadn’t factored in getting qualified and reliable staff members for the restaurant, so I encountered unhappy customers and losses because of food wastage or theft. To top it all, our location was completely wrong.

What do you mean?

Here is an example. The customers in our location were interested in quantity, not quality. My cuisine was gourmet meals, which means I used high-end products. For instance, instead of cooking fat, I would buy olive oil, lime instead of lemon, butter instead of margarine. My costing reflected this, but the customers thought the prices were too high and the servings too small. We were on different wavelengths.

After eight months, some might say you walked away too early.

I thought that myself, but to make my restaurant work, I would have had to change my entire concept. I knew my love for cooking would die if I did that because I didn’t just want a restaurant, I wanted a place I would enjoy working, quality I would be proud of. I realised I couldn’t have those things and make a profit at that location, so I walked away.

What was the impact of this?

I was 25, so I kept telling myself it was just a bump in my journey. Looking back now, I see how broken and disillusioned I was. I stopped cooking for two years. I didn’t just walk away from my restaurant, I walked away from food. 2014 was a difficult year for me.

How did you make your way back?

In the two years when I wasn’t cooking, I worked with my mum, helping her run her interior design business, where I learnt a lot about managerial skills. And then I got married and had a baby.

When I was on maternity leave, for some reason the urge to cook again just started coming back and I couldn’t silence it. I knew I didn’t want a restaurant and I wasn’t sure about a full-time catering job like the one I had at the bank. Then in February this year, I got the idea of Dial-a-Dinner.

How does Dial-a-Dinner work?

It’s targeted towards gated communities and estates, and busy professionals who get home too tired to cook or want to enjoy a lovely gourmet meal from the comfort of their home. My market right now is between Syokimau and Machakos. Every day we have a different menu, which we post in community WhatsApp groups or text to our clients. We then get orders and deliver to those clients’ houses. We serve lunch and dinner from Monday to Saturday.

On a slow day, we get about five orders. On a good day, 15 to 20 orders. Each order is about Sh450, depending on the item. In the last six months, we have made in the region of Sh80,000 per month on average, and we have served about 500 people.

What are doing differently now from when you ran the restaurant?

Location and overheads. My predominant clientele are people who live in gated communities. These are people who are willing to pay for quality and they appreciate the value of gourmet food. To cut down on my costs, I’ve sourced for a relatively inexpensive location for my kitchen and I’ve minimised on staff. I understand now the value of growing slowly with your business over time. I’m not in a hurry.

What is your vision for Dial-a-Dinner?

We are currently in about three gated communities and a few offices. I would like to get access to all the gated communities between Syokimau and Machakos, and eventually spread to Nairobi. It’s all about serving a large number of customers in one area.

How would you manage your expansion?

Our biggest challenge would be deliveries. Right now they are done by my husband after he comes home from work, which is limiting, not to mention exhausting for him.

My plan is to get delivery bikes, a bigger kitchen and a select few chefs I can train to ensure quality control. Our budget for this would be approximately Sh1 million. We are currently sourcing for an investor. With an investment of this amount, the business would recoup the money in less than six months. That’s my immediate focus.

Dial-a-Dinner is on the right track and I know we will make it work.