Startup Story

Khayelitsha Cookies, owned by Adri Williams, is an impact driven, hand-made cookie manufacturing business making a difference to reducing unemployment in South Africa, and empowering women to look after their families.

LoA chatted to owner, Adri Williams, to find out more about this impact driven business that is changing lives daily.

What does your company do?

We employ previously unemployed, uneducated women from the rural community called Khayelitsha in South Africa and teach these ladies to hand bake and hand pack cookies in our FSSC accredited factory in Parow. What takes us 40 days to bake takes a machine just 1 day. We bake on average between 60 000 to 84 000 cookies all by hand per day, and currently only function on less than 30% capacity. Each lady we employ supports up to 7 dependents daily. We are making a difference in reducing unemployment in South Africa, enabling women to look after their families.

“We employ previously unemployed, uneducated women from the rural community called Khayelitsha in South Africa and teach these ladies to hand bake and hand pack cookies in our FSSC accredited factory in Parow.”

What inspired you to start your company?

Unemployment in South Africa combined with the number of uneducated women in our country. We want to enable women to take care of their families. With the world changing into mechanization of all the manufacturing facilities, which leads to more unemployment, in a country that has nearly 30% unemployment rates, we are playing our part to radically reduce unemployment in South Africa and putting food on tables.

Why should anyone use your service or product?

We hand bake and hand pack cookies, unlike the majority of the cookie companies in South Africa who machine bake and pack these cookies. We sell the best quality cookies, at affordable pricing. The real difference…..they are baked with love. To see women who have never worked before and have no skills, like speaking and understanding English, and cannot read or write, employed and enabling them to provide for themselves and their dependents, is worth every single risk we have taken thus far. In a country where 64% of our children die before the age of 5 due to underlying causes of malnutrition, we have to do something to radically reduce unemployment and enable people to provide for their families. This is the way in which we can change the unemployment figures around and prevent more children from becoming part of these statistics.

Tell us a little about your team

We have a team of over 60 women bakers in the factory, who collectively own 30% shareholding in the company through a trust fund. We have a team of 8 males assisting our majority women team in the factory. We employ over 80% black women in our business. Our shareholding is 51% black women owned and 100% women owned and managed. The majority of our staff cannot read, write or speak English.

“We have a team of over 60 women bakers in the factory, who collectively own 30% shareholding in the company through a trust fund.”

“We have always wanted to replicate this business module to impact other informal settlements around South Africa.”

Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And, do you come from an entrepreneurial background?

I worked for a large corporate in sales, doing very well for myself in the industry, until I held a dying baby at the Brooklyn chest hospital. This is where my life changed realizing the true reality and impact of malnutrition during pregnancy. I sent my CV out to look for something else that had more meaning, and then I got a call from Khayelitsha Cookies for an interview, when the company was just 2 years old. When I walked in and saw 4 women hand baking, I realized this was my purpose in life, and saw the image of 1000 women plus baking. This is the dream I have been working very hard at achieving over the last 12 years of my life. In 2013 the business would have closed down due to losses, as what takes us 40 days to bake takes a machine 1 day and it was a near impossible mission to compete with machine baked cookies from a price point of view. I then took a leap of faith after God confirmed it for me in Leviticus 26:10, and offered the directors R1 for the business, took over R2.5million in debt for a business that was worth R100 000 in net asset values. I offered to pay the debt off over a 10-year period and took the biggest gamble of my life. The rest is history, we are now 6 years down the line, still operating daily, managed to pay off just over R800 000 in debt, and still working hard to truly manage this business very well to enable us to get to the 5% profit margin, to enable us to pay off the debt in time.

What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?

We have always wanted to replicate this business module to impact other informal settlements around South Africa. We just launched a new product for the American market called YOU, which was launched at a USA trade show in September 2019 at the American Food and Beverage company. We also launched a new product line which is baked with fresh fruit and vegetables and which is reworked to a dehydrated product and used back in our cookies again. The reason behind this development was that we can purchase a farm and replicate our very labour intensive business module into a women owned and managed hydroponics / aquaponics system where we will produce our own vegetables for these product ranges, and also increase our product offering to our existing hotel and restaurant clients with fresh fruit and vegetables. We started a crowd funding campaign on our new international website youcookiecompany.com to raise funds to purchase this farm, and also to purchase the existing factory we are renting.

“We just launched a new product for the American market called YOU, which was launched at a USA trade show in September 2019 at the American Food and Beverage company.”

What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?

Knowing that as an entrepreneur you put food on tables for families. This is the drive, that is what keeps the focus when things get tough. That you can dream big and think outside the box and make these dreams a reality.

What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?

If you can dream it, you can do it. Nothing comes easy, hard work pays off. Take risks that will pay off and never, ever lose your passion. Passion drives the business, and the future ideas - without passion you won’t be able to reach your dreams!

Contact or follow Khayelitsha Cookies

Why LoA loves it….

At Lionesses of Africa, we understand the power of women entrepreneurs and their businesses to make a big impact on the lives of others and their communities. Khayalitsha Cookies is an impact driven business with a huge heart and an equally big desire to change women’s lives in South Africa. Adri Williams’ vision for the future of the business is as big as the impact she makes. This is a business that passionately believes in women to be the economic drivers of the communities they live in, and as such, is an inspiration to so many others about the power of social entrepreneurship to change lives. — Melanie Hawken, founder & ceo, Lionesses of Africa