Real Spice
Founders (from left): Natra Zeryihun and Felema Neguse
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myrealspice@gmail.com
Real Spice, headquartered in San Francisco, is a company that specializes in Ethiopian seasonings to meet growing demand for healthier, better-tasting and more exotic meals among discerning consumers.
HOW MENTORING WILL HELP: “We hope to accrue lifelong business lessons that will take us far in both our career and personal lives,” Zeryihun and Neguse say. “A large part of our success will reside in expert marketing tactics and sales strategies. Though we’re both business students, we can still benefit from experienced mentors who have extensive knowledge of the business world.”
HOW $10,000 WILL HELP: “We’ll use the funding for product extension, maintaining supplies, investing in software such as QuickBooks, and for intensive marketing,” Zeryihun and Neguse say. “We need to invest in advertising: Google Adwords, culinary magazines, in-store demos, Groupon.”
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CONSUMERS’ BURGEONING PASSION for high-quality, artisanal crafts of all kinds certainly extends to culinary businesses, for which foodies’ (literal) taste for the exotic can make enormous marketplace successes out of all kinds of previously little-known products.
Enter Natra Zeryihun and Felema Neguse, both 22, the cofounders of Real Spice. Born into Ethiopian households and raised amid the anything-goes food culture of the Bay Area, Zeryihun and Neguse launched Real Spice last October. Its specialty is its Berbere spice mix, which presents the palate with a pleasing heat and rich taste. As the founders put it, its presence can “transform any mundane dish into a divine cultural experience.”
Ethiopian cuisine’s profile has been ascendant in recent years, thanks in large part to the cachet of Marcus Samuelsson, a celebrity chef who was born in Ethiopia and raised in Sweden. Real Spice seeks to tap into that newly broadened market opportunity, beginning with that beguiling Berbere mix. “It’s a hot commodity,” Zeryihun and Neguse note. “Pun intended.” •
