While other subscription box services offer meals from a variety of cultures, one new subscription box is catering to consumers with a curiosity for African cuisines.
Kemet Worldwide, a Chicago-based subscription box service featuring African cuisines, just launched in March. With an option to buy individual boxes for $35 or get bi-monthly boxes for $30 per month, the service aims to connect consumers with African culture through food, and support charities that uplift African communities.
“If you hear anything about Africa, there’s always a lot of misconceptions,” said Kemet Worldwide founder and CEO Abib Ajibola. “I guess I started the company to clear up those misconceptions. Food brings us together. And the way you learn about people’s cultures is through food.”
To start, Kemet Worldwide is offering ingredients for dishes like Nigerian pepper soup and West African jollof rice. Each box will contain the spices, seasonings and step-by-step recipes to make two to three meals. Unlike other subscription services that provide all of the ingredients in the same box, it won’t contain rice or meat. The box is instead meant to supply ingredients commonly found at African grocery stores and supplement ingredients available at home, Ajibola said.
In addition to ingredients for African dishes, subscribers will receive a passport-like booklet to collect stickers shaped like the countries from which cuisines originated and have the colors of their corresponding national flags. Subscribers who collect stickers will receive a to-be-determined prize, Ajibola said.
Over time, Kemet Worldwide’s boxes will include Ghanian, Ethiopian, South African, Egyptian and Moroccan meals.
The food subscription industry remains crowded with big companies like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh that offer dishes from a variety cultures, along with other Chicago-based companies like Home Chef, KitchFix, Madison & Rayne, and Cooked.
Blue Apron offers African dishes along with meals from Chinese, Latin American, Middle Eastern and other cultures.
The top five largest countries of origin for African immigrants are Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Ghana, and Kenya, according to a 2017 Pew Research analysis of the 2015 American Community Survey. Given the presence of the Nigerian community in U.S., it was easier to source the ingredients for Nigerian dishes than for other countries, Ajibola said. Though the ingredients in the box are sourced from U.S.-based companies, Ajibola looks for companies that have ties to African cultures.
So far, Kemet Worldwide is getting its ingredients from Iya Foods, and Ajibola is looking to donate a portion of the company’s proceeds to charities with ties to African cultures like Nigerian American Professionals Association in Chicago. These efforts, Ajibola said, are his way of economically supporting African-American and Black communities.
“For the boxes themselves, if they come from a specific country, I want some of the proceeds donated to a charity that has cultural ties with that country,” he said. “I feel that’s the best way to give back, by paying their culture respect.”
