From a family kitchen to national shelves: SPAR helps women-led food business scale
- Dylan Naidoo
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
By: Spar
Thirteen years after sisters Jane and Amy started, “We Are Food” from a family home in Umhlanga Rocks, the Durban business is producing frozen ready meals for the SPAR Signature Selection range - the latest milestone in a journey from home kitchen to certified food manufacture.
Thirteen years ago, a handwritten customer notebook and eight chest freezers filled the garage of a family home in Umhlanga Rocks. Today, the business born there is preparing frozen ready meals for nationwide distribution through SPAR - a milestone that shows what can happen when entrepreneurial determination is matched by practical support and access to opportunity.
We Are Food began in 2013 when Jane, drawing on a family passion for cooking and a year of culinary training, started preparing home-style frozen meals for relatives and neighbours. The idea came from a familiar challenge: a busy working mother in the family wanted the convenience of ready-made meals without giving up the quality and care of home cooking.
Demand grew quickly, taking the fledgling business from the family kitchen into a small industrial facility in Durban North in 2015.
Jane’s sister Amy joined full-time in 2016, bringing commercial expertise while Jane focused on operations. Their complementary strengths helped turn the idea into a 500m² manufacturing operation employing more than 30 people. Along the way, the business has supplied major South African retailers and exported products to the United Arab Emirates.
Yet, despite the scale of the operation today, the sisters say the principle behind the business has changed very little. “We still stay true to our roots: a passion for food and, more importantly, love for the people who eat it. That is the secret ingredient that makes our meals taste as though they were made at home,” claim Jane and Amy.
A decade-long relationship, built store by store
We Are Food's relationship with SPAR began at grassroots level in 2015, when a family friend encouraged the manager of Holdens SPAR on Florida Road to give the fledgling brand a chance.
It started with one freezer. Soon, Jane and Amy were spending hours conducting tastings in store, merchandising their products and speaking directly to customers. As awareness grew, other SPAR stores began approaching them to stock the range.
That early access offered more than shelf space. It gave the sisters firsthand experience of retail and an opportunity to understand what it takes to build a product from the store floor upwards. They developed relationships with store owners and staff that they continue to nurture through tastings, merchandising and direct engagement.
Seven years later, the relationship entered a new phase when We Are Food joined the first intake of the SPAR Supplier Development Programme in 2022. At the time, the company had limited formal food-safety structures. The programme provided access to training, specialist expertise, resources and practical guidance as the business worked towards Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) certification.
For two entrepreneurs without formal food-safety training, the requirements initially seemed formidable. Rather than navigating the process alone, they were able to draw on the supplier-development team for guidance as they introduced new systems, strengthened processes and embedded food safety more deeply into the business.
“What seemed like a daunting, almost unachievable task became a reality with the encouragement and support of the SPAR Supplier Development Programme team. It gave us people we could turn to when we didn’t know the answer - and ultimately helped us build a stronger business,” says Jane and Amy.
Certification proved to be much more than a compliance milestone. It enabled We Are Food to become a national supplier, strengthened customer confidence and helped open the door to larger retail and export opportunities.
From compliance to commercial opportunity
We Are Food is one of thousands of emerging food businesses supported through the programme since its launch in 2022.
To date, the SPAR Supplier Development Programme has assisted 3,188 micro and small food businesses, with 424 suppliers achieving food-safety compliance and a further 1,063 actively progressing on their compliance journey. Compliant suppliers are listed on the SPAR Marketplace, collectively showcasing 6,937 stock-keeping units across categories including bakeries, beverages and groceries.
For Yolisha Govender, National Supplier Development Specialist at The SPAR Group, the objective is not simply to help businesses tick a compliance box, but to build the capabilities that allow smaller suppliers to participate meaningfully in formal retail.
“Food-safety compliance can be one of the biggest barriers between a great local product and a sustainable retail business. Our role is to help suppliers build the systems, knowledge and confidence they need to cross that threshold. The real success is when that capability translates into new customers, new markets, greater production and ultimately more jobs. We Are Food is a powerful example of that journey,” says Govender.
The impact is increasingly extending beyond the SPAR network, with participating suppliers entering other retailers, channels and markets - an important measure of a programme designed to develop sustainable businesses rather than dependence on a single customer.
For We Are Food , the progression has now come full circle.
More than a decade after placing that first freezer in a SPAR store, the business has secured an order to manufacture gourmet frozen ready meals for SPAR’s Signature Selection range, taking products made in its Durban facility to consumers nationally.
For Jane and Amy, the opportunity represents more than a new order. It is the culmination of years spent improving their operation, investing in their people, protecting the quality of their food and building a relationship with SPAR from store level upwards.
Growth that creates opportunity
Scaling up for the first order has brought a new set of challenges. The Durban kitchen was already configured for large-scale production, but the volume required additional freezer capacity. Through flexible dispatch support from SPAR Encore, finished stock can be released as it becomes ready, while We Are Food has adjusted shifts and production planning internally to accommodate increased demand.
More significantly, growth is creating room for more people. With its existing team operating at capacity, We Are Food is bringing in additional employees and expects to transition some casual staff into permanent positions as production for the SPAR Signature Selection range grows.
The company’s approach has been to recruit for potential and passion and develop skills from within. Of its more than 30 employees, only two are qualified chefs; much of the wider team has been trained and upskilled inside the business.
That experience has shaped Jane and Amy’s view of what meaningful retailer support for smaller suppliers looks like. Beyond providing access to shelves, they believe large retailers can make a material difference by helping SMEs navigate complex food-safety requirements, understanding the financial realities of scaling production and creating commercial conditions that allow emerging manufacturers to grow sustainably.
“For a small manufacturer, a big opportunity also comes with big responsibility. You have to buy ingredients, produce at scale, pay your team and support your own suppliers before that growth is realised. When a retailer understands those pressures and works with you practically, it gives a small business the ability to say yes to opportunities that might otherwise feel out of reach”, says Jane and Amy.
A Women’s Month story of resilience and possibility
Behind the commercial milestones is also a very human story of building a business while life continued around it.
Between 2019 and 2023, Jane and Amy welcomed four children while navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, civil unrest and the Durban floods. They credit family, friends, colleagues and a strong network of women - within their kitchen and beyond it - with helping them keep moving forward.
Their experience has also made them advocates for asking for help rather than trying to build in isolation. Over the years, they have actively sought conversations with store owners, industry leaders, executives and even competitors to learn from those who have faced similar challenges.
Their advice to other women building businesses is equally practical: ask the question, seek out people who know more than you do, and don’t let fear of failure make the decision for you.
“There have been so many moments when we could have looked at the next step and decided it was too big for us. What we’ve learnt is to ask anyway - ask for the meeting, ask the question, ask for advice and put yourself forward for the opportunity. You may not know exactly how you’re going to get there when you start, but that shouldn’t stop you from starting”, say Jane and Amy.
As We Are Food begins producing for national distribution, the sisters are already working with SPAR’s development team on new dishes and potential additions to the frozen-meal range.
For a business that began with one family looking for a better way to put convenient, nourishing food on the table, the journey from a home kitchen and eight garage freezers to national retail shelves is a significant commercial breakthrough.
But during Women’s Month, it represents something bigger too: what becomes possible when women-led businesses are given not only an opportunity to enter the formal economy, but the practical support and capability to grow within it.
For more information on the SPAR Supplier Development Programme, visit:
