Sometimes the body refuses to digest milk, and for some people, lactose intolerance announces itself in a loud and messy way.
Lactose intolerance is a condition where the body has total or partial inability to digest lactose, one of the components of milk. The symptoms include bloating, abdominal pain and diarrhea after consuming dairy products.
This was the unpleasant situation that began Kiogora Kajuju’s journey to healthy eating, a search for body and mind wellness and the foundation for her healthy snacks business: Healthy Kajuju.
“I discovered that I was lactose intolerant when I was in university. So, I started questioning everything else I was eating because before then, I didn’t know there was such a deep connection between the food we eat and our general health,” she says.
Kiogora cut off dairy, meat and overly processed food from her diet. She started experimenting with new ingredients in the kitchen because she still wanted to enjoy her food.
Healthy Kajuju’s range of products.
In the process, she began to share the healthier recipes on Instagram and her blog. Gradually, she discovered other people were also going through a similar shift in their relationship with food.
Fresh out of university in 2016, Kiogora started to sell the food she used to make while in university at the local organic markets near her home. The reception towards her fruit and vegetable juices, and brownies, cakes, truffles, granola bars and granola cereal were exceptional.
And what started as a lifestyle change to improve her general wellbeing was slowly panning out to be a business.
Healthy Kajuju today makes breakfast cereals like granola, muesli and clusters. As well as crackers, frozen burgers and different flavours of snack bars and energy bites.
The snacks are stocked in stores across Nairobi, such as Healthy U, Chandarana Foodplus, Zucchini, Onn The Way Supermarket, JooSmoo, Nairobi Garage and more. They are also available online and in Nakuru, Nanyuki, Mombasa and Kisumu.
“We use ingredients that most people probably have in their kitchen like almonds, dates, sunflower seeds and honey,” she says.
Becoming a full-time small business owner was not on the cards for Kiogora.
She studied law at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom and hoped to go into corporate law. But she felt she needed to combine law with another skill and so took up business management, so she graduated with two degrees – Law and Business Management.
“I knew I was becoming an entrepreneur when I felt the joy I had for it. At first, I was doing it as a hobby while I was still qualifying to be an advocate at Kenya School of Law. It was a side hustle and it was tasking in itself. Kenyans really glorify side hustles so it just seems normal to have your day job and a side hustle. But then I realized for it to be more than a side hustle I needed to give it more attention,” says Kiogora.
The late nights she used to spend at her mother’s kitchen preparing snacks for sale the following day seem like a distant memory now. But they also remind her of how far she has come and how big the business has grown.
Currently, Healthy Kajuju has nine employees working out of the business located in Nairobi.
“I used to do everything from making the products, selling, delivering, marketing, packaging to doing the accounts. When you start a business you think of it as your baby, you take a hands-on approach because you want everything to be perfect. Sometimes it even prevents you from delegating duties and that’s something I have had to push myself to do to allow myself to grow,” says Kiogora.
To make the business of handling money more manageable, Kiogora also relies on M-PESA, which customers use to make payments.
Her biggest lesson yet, as an entrepreneur, has been the steep learning curve involved with running a business. Kiogora says the experience and new skills she has learnt on the job cannot match what she learnt in theory in school in Business Management.
Her parents have been supportive of her career right from the start and were her first customers (still are) when she used to sell her snacks at stands at the market.
“When I couldn’t go to the market, my mom would actually go and sell for me. About two months ago when I traveled, my dad would come to the office to check on things. They are a great support system because sometimes it’s really tough and you need someone to validate you and keep you going,” she says.
A lot has changed in the business since it began in 2016; Kiogora no longer sells the snacks to just her family and friends, she no longer fills her mother’s kitchen with products on every available space and the goals she sets for herself keep getting bigger and bigger.
But the one constant that has remained and still centers her is for her and her customers to eat and stay healthy.
