By David Wanjala
As a young man growing through high school, hospitality industry never featured in Dan Awuondo’s options of career dreams. Today however, as a franchisee of Flame Flavours, he is blossoming in the sector with the sky seeming the only limit.
It all started in early 90s after he cleared high school. Obviously he came to Nairobi and after trying his hands on a few things here and there including with Agip and Shell & BP filling stations as a loader and with BAT as a marketer, the alumnus of Usenge High School finally joined Career Training Centre in Westlands Nairobi as an apprentice in 1996, four years after clearing high school.
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With BAT, Mr Awoundo recalls, it was fun. “We would give unlabeled cigarettes to smokers and ask them to puff and identify the different brands, whether Sportsman, SM or Embassy. We awarded whoever would get it right.” This was to later prove invaluable in his career development as it prepared him to be a people’s person, a key personal character in hospitality industry that was to later become his bread and butter.
His interest in the industry stemmed from an uncle who worked at Utalii College that he used to frequently visit. He was fascinated with the pristine white uniforms of the trainees and the precision with which they executed their duties. But as with many of his contemporaries coming to the city from upcountry on completion of O-Levels, there was not enough money to afford him training at one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s most revered college of hospitality.
He thus ended up at the Career Training Centre for Food & Beverage. This was also by chance. He had met and befriended the college principle through his earlier works with BAT. It was a one-year course with his first attachment at Ngulia Safari Lodge in Mtito Andei for four months. He came back and finally enrolled at Utalii College for Hotel and Management towards the end of 1997. With that, his long journey in the hospitality industry began. He would later go back to Utalii for Management Development Programmes as on job training.
Dan’s worksheet after Utalii College began at Tiwi Travel and Beach Hotel in Mombasa in 1998. It was a short stint of about one year as the infamous Kaya bombo clashes, in which at some point he survived by a whisker, distabilised the tourism industry leading to massive exodus from the coast either for fear of the insecurity or for lose of jobs as hotels and other service industry jobs directly linked to tourism either scaled down or closed altogether.
He came back to Nairobi, worked for a couple of restaurants before joining Sarova Stanley – Nairobi as a restaurant service waiter. He worked here for about four years. This professional journey was not without its ups and down. As an aggressive young man hell-bent on personal advancement, he had a side hustle from which he earned the extra coin. He registered a company with which he did catering mostly targeting weddings and corporate functions. He would do small jobs for between Sh200, 000 and Sh250, 000 but just as it had begun looking up, it came down crumbling.
“One day we got a contract for a wedding function for about Sh750, 000, Sh500, 000 upfront. But my partner, a guy called Mburu went on my behalf to pick the money and then disappeared with it. I found myself in a big problem because I was now to raise that money in two weeks to give back to the owner so they could get in somebody else,” Dan recalls, weirdly, affording a chuckle.
He had to sell off a piece of land to a sympathetic relative at a throw away price to settle it and with it, his side hustle died. “That was a big drawback. It affected me even at work. It is a period that I never look forward to remembering. You know, they could come to my workplace to demand the money, the wedding is just about the corner and they do not have the money. You cannot focus. But it worked well. I raised the money and gave them.”
While at Stanley, Dan was headhunted by Steers in 2004. He was taken in as a trainee assistant manager. After three months, he was given a shop on Muindi Mbingu Street to run as a restaurant manager, opening a new chapter – fast foods – in his career progress. He was to later manage various Steers shops for the seven years he worked with the company including on Ngong’ Road and Wabera Street where he excelled.
“For more than five years of the seven that I worked continuously for Steers I was based at Wabera Street and the benchmark we raised there has never been broken up to date,” the father of three says with pride.
In 2011, Kentucky Fried Chicken popularly known as KFC, beckoned and Dan buckled. He joined a team of about ten people that KFC took for training in South Africa and on return, they opened the first shop for KFC at Nakumatt Junction along Ngong’ Road.
“KFC was a bomb. It was coming for the first time and so we were thoroughly trained to come and sustain their portfolio,” Dan says. He worked as a shift leader.
He did not, however, last at KFC. Steers, his immediate former employer came for him. “They felt there was a void when I left and they wanted me to go back and help them streamline. So the MD asked me back as operations manager.”
Dan worked with Steers again for two years. “Coming back to Steers as operations manager was easier because I was bringing along a couple of fresh ideas and knowledge. The intense training with KFC especially on how to focus and how to harmonise team members to get results came in handy,” he says.
In the ensuing years however, Steers experienced some cash flow problems. This, Dan suspects, could have stemmed from pressure on the Kenyan company from the South African franchise to expand. The MD, with whom Dan had developed rapport following many years of successfully working with, hinted that there could be a new partner coming on board to help actualize the demands of the franchise owners. They would come along with changes some of which would be to take over certain key positions in the company including operations and finance. He advised Dan to go revamp the South C shop that was not doing well and if he managed, he would then take it up his franchise. It worked just perfectly for Dan.
Within four months of Dan’s commitment to the shop, he turned it around, surpassing the expectations. However, as fate would have it, the MD fell sick and sought treatment in India. The new MD, without the hindsight of Dan’s agreement with the former MD, did not like the idea trashed the agreement. He asked Dan to take up any other position in the company. He was not going for less and that is where the road ended, but not before the idea of running a franchise had seemed real.
Long before, Dan had met and made acquaintance with Witness Chingwena, a regular customer at Steers outlets. He was the chief operations officer with Innscor Africa Ltd, a Zimbabwean franchise that locally run a string of fast food companies including Bakers Inn, Chicken Inn, Galitos, Pizza Inn and Creamy Inn. Together, they had been toying with the idea of a local franchise. It came in handy.
In early 2014, he reactivated his contact with Witness who had long before registered a company and was already operating a franchise, Flame Flavours and had an agreement with Engen Petroleum Ltd to operate their shops under the franchise name. Dan formed a company, Vesha Foods, and engaged in a serious partnership agreement with Flame Flavours.
He started with two shops, Parklands and Athi River Engen petrol stations. “When we started we took in two shops, Parklands and Athi River and we have been building on them, it has been now a year down the line and we have just acquired a third one in Mombasa.
“I came in and put in exactly all that I knew from these other places, a combination from what my training was in Steers and KFC. I focused more on customer satisfaction, which meant training staff to required standards. Moving forward from where we started, we have had a very steady growth. We’ve grown by about 50% from where we started. We’ve not only been able to sustain the standard by the franchise, but also those set by Engen,” Dan offers
“Our specialty is on pizza and our strongest point is on chicken. We take a lot of time to grill our chicken. We literally do flame grilled chicken with herbs that have been refined with health consciousness,” he adds.
Athi River is doing best on deliveries owing to the blocks of estates surrounding it that hold up to 300 households each.
Vesha Foods under the banner of Flame Flavours boasts of 40 employees on permanent basis having humbly started off with seven at the Parklands shop. “Still, we’ve another shop coming up in Kitengela and we’ll providing more employment and I hope that figure will rise to above 50,” says an elated Dan.
The potential of growth for the fast foods industry in Kenya, according to Dan is still virgin.
“People still want their food fast. Lifestyles have changed, Nairobi has become so busy and the world is now a global village. People interact more. Those who visit the developed world come back and want to sustain their newly acquired lifestyles. People have really embraced the idea of first food,” he says.
The game changer, Dan says, is the aspect of health. People want to have their meals fast but they also don’t want to have just chips. So the challenge is for you to harmonise it in a way that is still fast but with value adds in terms of health. That is how the issue of ughali, white rice and salads is coming in.
There’s great potential for expansion. “Ten years ago pizza was for the elite, today, it is for everyone that comes around including university students who find it easy to contribute, buy and share one big pizza,” he says. It is all telling in the number of fast food companies flocking in. Macdonald’s is on its way. Pizza Hut is already on the ground, training employees. KFC and Innscor are busy expanding.
The only regret Mr Awoundo has is staying longer in formal employment. “I wish I did not dwell so much on formal employment. But then again everything works for a reason. May be it was just designed to work like that, it was the only way that would prepare me into what I am today. May be if I did not get that kind of training and the corporate understanding of the business, I could not be able to hack it.”
The father of three is so grateful to his wife Jacky for the support, without which he could not have been able to sail through the mucky waters that are sometimes the hospitality industry over the years.
