In an average Mosotho family, the household income is never enough to afford a good quality lunchbox for school children throughout the month. This is either due to impulsive spending, low income or the total cost of actually preparing the lunchbox. By the second week of the month, compromises are made on the lunchboxes which usually has a negative effect on the children’s morale at school and around their peers.
Kasi Yum Lunchbox Delivery is a business that solves this problem by guaranteeing a consistent school lunchbox for children. They save parents the cost of producing lunchboxes daily and ensures that regardless of their financial situation, their children will always have a delicious home-cooked meal to take to school.
We took a minute to catch up with Nkitsing Kabi to learn about his business. Interestingly, the most important trait to maintain his business seems to be consistency based on some soft metrics. Our interview transcript follows below.
What is your background?
I am a 25 year old from Khubetsoana Lecoop and I did my high school at Lesotho High School from 2006-2010 and then went to NUL from 2011-2013. I moved to Midrand, studied Business Administration at Midrand Graduate Institute from 2014 – 2016 but only got up to 3rd year. Since then I’ve been extensively self studying marketing and business management.
In 2006, I had a neighborhood short term loan business with my friend, in 2014 I was part of MGI’s biannual social market organisers and in 2017 I was part of the BackYard@Lynos backyard chill event organizers.
You just launched, how’s everything coming up?
The business is in its third week of operation and it has been on a steady growth trajectory. It is indeed working, the demand is high, the only catch is I’ve started operations only in Khubetsoana at the moment to test out how sustainable the business model is but the demand is very distributed around Maseru.
Are there any ethical concerns that your type of business must deal with?
There are quite a lot of them. Firstly, some parents haven’t yet warmed up to the idea of having someone else prepare their child’s lunchbox. We have a general lack of trust in our society and being a new establishment with no substantial mileage and loyalty yet, I face an uphill battle to earn their trust.
Secondly, different people have different tastes, I’ve had one prospect say she wants Halaal food for her child (which I had no idea of), some want gluten-free food and some children are allergic to certain food products. We’ve countered this by using a holistic approach to serving customers, we are flexible to tweak our packages to meet the customer’s demand as long as the agreed-on meal stays within our cost margins.
Also, more and more schools demand that children take to school a meal that they decide on, they have weekly menus to be followed. But we hope to have partnerships with these schools in the future.
How are you using technology?
I haven’t quite used technology that much. I have used common social media sites as immediate customer touch points and secondary marketing platforms. Also, I use IM messaging to always be available to communicate with customers to fulfill our holistic customer approach.
At the moment we accept subscriptions from most relevant mobile money outlets such as Mpesa/Ecocash, EFT, etc. I plan to have a mobile friendly website up, where customers can place either weekly or monthly orders from the comfort of their home or office, browse through available packages, create their own menus and learn and recommend schools they’d like us to work with.
What else do you aim to implement going forward?
We plan to partner with local logistic providers so as to quickly expand our service throughout Maseru and later nationwide without the hassle of having to own all our distribution channels. Also if there are any local producers or business men who believe we can collaborate successfully to help build both our businesses they should feel free to contact me and we can brainstorm on a few possibilities.
Whom do you seek advice from for your business?
At the moment, no one. Since it’s still in its early days, I haven’t encountered anything I can’t handle. Furthermore, there is a lack of dignified mentors. The few that could be available are hard to meet with.
What do you have on your menu and your current offering?
We offer 3 menus
Bronze Package : M350 p/m
– Cheese, Polony sandwich and snacks
– Hot dog, and snacks
– Fries and vianna and snacks
– Egg, Cheese and Ham sandwich and snacks
– Burger meal and snacks
Silver Package : M380 p/m
– Jumbo cheese, polony sandwich and snacks
– Hot dog, fruit and snacks
– Fries and vianna and snacks
– Ham, cheese and egg sandwich and snacks
– Cheese burger meal and snacks
Gold Package: M450 p/m
– Toasted polony and cheese jumbo sandwich and snacks
– Hot dog meal and snacks
– Jumbo ham cheese and egg sandwich, fruit and snacks
– Stripped meat and veggies taco and snacks
– Cheese burger meal and snacks
How can people reach you?
The service is currently only based in Khubetsoana but as soon as October we are expanding to Naleli, Sekamaneng and possibly Ha Foso.
Follow our page Kasi Yum Lunchbox on Facebook
For delivery, inbox Nkitsing Kabi on Fcebook
Call (+266) 57535055/63110044 WhatsApp (+266) 67110044 for orders and enquiries