Iliyaas Muhammad has tapped into the power of ginger to fuel the retail business he owns with his wife, growing revenue by 40% each of the last three years with hopes of exceeding that in 2023.
The company, Really Reel Ginger, is headed toward its one-year anniversary with a storefront at Reading Terminal Market, and Muhammad is looking to grow from direct-to-consumer sales to wholesale and establish a relationship with a co-packer.
Doing so, he hopes, will allow for eventual expansion into grocery heavyweights like Whole Foods, Giant and Acme.
Muhammad informally launched Really Reel Ginger in 2011 at a Penn’s Landing event. On the organization committee, he was offered a vendor spot at the event. When he told his wife, Hadia, that he was thinking about selling T-shirts, she suggested something else: the ginger-based juices they made at family events and for holidays that harkened back to her childhood in the West African nation of Mali.
The drinks were also familiar to Muhammad, who, after graduating from Penn State University, served in the Peace Corps in Mali.
Their fresh-pressed juices — made from ginger, lemon and mint — proved a hit. Muhammad sold 75% of the juices they’d prepared for the Penn's Landing event, with the remaining 25% going to another vendor after the festivities ended.
Given their success, he began to wonder if they were on to something and decided to continue making juices. Business was a natural fit for Muhammad who, while in the Peace Corps, focused on microfinance initiatives. While he found satisfaction in helping others, seeing their businesses flourish also stoked his desire to do the same.
“I always wanted to have my own thing,” said the North Philadelphia native. “Once this opportunity opened with my wife’s suggestion, things just took off.”
For years, the business was a side hustle, with Muhammad setting up outside of community events. In 2017, he took things up a notch, becoming a day cart vendor twice a week at Reading Terminal Market in Center City.
As his popularity grew, the market increased his days to three and eventually seven, and he picked up spots at seasonal events like the Christmas Village in Center City and the Philadelphia Flower Show. The success was such that in 2019 Muhammad quit his job as a community initiatives specialist with the City of Philadelphia to focus on Really Reel Ginger full-time.
“I made sure that we were [at Reading Terminal Market] every single day because I wanted to make sure that our future presence was felt from our past presence because we were there so often…,” he said.
After years of being on a day cart program, a space opened and Really Reel Ginger debuted its storefront at Reading Terminal Market last April.
Opening the store not only added more space, but the chance to further diversify. While the company started with juices, today it makes all manner of ginger products, including a candy, crumble, and dry tea-like blends reminiscent of their juices.
The Really Reel Ginger Crumble is a best-seller and is based on a recipe Hadia created as a child. It contains ginger upcycled from their juices, plus coconut and almonds. It can be used as a topper for yogurt, oatmeal, ice cream or soup, or as a breading for chicken or seafood.
“It's been the star of the show,” said Muhammad. “There's a lot of ginger out there in the market, but I haven't seen anything quite like this.”
Beyond food, they’ve introduced skincare and haircare products in a move they hope will turn Really Reel Ginger into a brand. Ginger-forward products include soaps, a body butter, a shampoo and conditioner, shower gel and a bath scrub, which range in price from about $15 to upwards of $80. Juices can be purchased individually or in packs of six for $42.
“We're thinking about all the points of people's lives, whether they're drinking, they're snacking, they're watching a movie, eating ice cream, we want to make sure that our products are wrapped within all facets of your day,” said Muhammad.
“As I've grown in this business, my goal is to aim it in such a way where it really gives a lot of energy and focus to making sure that our brand is tied around health and wellness,” he said, noting that ginger has natural benefits for ailments like inflammation and certain skin conditions.
Product diversification and the new space in Reading Terminal are proving a boon for business. In 2019, the same year he took Really Reel Ginger on full-time, Muhammad said revenue grew 69%. It followed that up with about 40% growth in each of the past three years. It’s a figure he hopes to maintain or even exceed by several percentage points in 2023.
To make that pivot, Muhammad turned to local resources like the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses at the Community College of Philadelphia.
Really Reel Ginger has been self-funded so far, though Muhammad has received some grant funding, including $10,000 from the Comcast RISE program awarded last year.
Currently, Really Reel Ginger products are handmade in a commercial kitchen at the Dorrance H. Hamilton Center for Culinary Enterprises in West Philadelphia. Muhammad’s goal in 2023 is to move production to a co-packer so they can scale, but he's cautious about maintaining quality.
“And then maybe from there we can pivot from just the Reading Terminal Market and holiday markets to larger markets throughout this region, this nation. The co-packing would make a lot of sense and help us tremendously,” he said.
Presently, all sales are direct to consumer but Muhammad would like to see wholesale – including at grocery stores – on the horizon.
