Ufurahie chakula chako! (Bon Appetit)

Gone are the days when the only alternative to eating at home meant a take-out menu or frozen meals from the grocery. If you live within an easy drive of Asheville or Waynesville, N.C., you have only to visit Kanini’s website and place an order. Then you can either pick up your frozen organic, gourmet meals from Blue Ridge Foods at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College’s Enka-Candler campus, or Kanini’s will deliver to your home for a flat rate of $8.

Kanini’s is the brainchild of two young mothers who love to cook, so they decided to start a small business. Jen Leichssenring and Erin Patton had been living in Waynesville, N.C., since 1999 and had been sharing family recipes. They each have three children and wanted a business to fit their schedules. They ruled out starting a restaurant for that reason and also decided that an actual store location would be difficult to manage, especially with small children to consider. Because they lived the hectic lives every young parent knows, frozen entrees seemed a tempting idea, and they knew that organic, gourmet options were a rarity. Working moms and dads, or stay-at-home moms who run out of time to cook could always use help, as could retirees on the go and anyone whose life gets too busy to plan out dinner. 

In 2007, these two chef moms went on a mission trip to Africa, where they worked to encourage small business development in Kenya. While in Africa, they got excited about the wonderful food they ate and about all the possibilities for a food-based enterprise. At one stage, their bus driver and tour guide gave every passenger a “pet name.” He called Leichssenring “Kanini,” an African term of endearment for a woman. The name seemed a perfect fit for the business beginning to form in their minds. 

Back home, they attended a small business seminar at Haywood Community College and spent the winter of 2008 writing a business plan, developing ideas for meals, and exploring locations for the food preparation. They looked at several commercial kitchens and then heard Mary Lou Surgi speak about Blue Ridge Food Ventures at the Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College’s Enka campus. 

Blue Ridge Food Ventures would provide a fully equipped and FDA-inspected kitchen as well as a locked cage in which they could store their small food preparation items such as bowls, cooking implements, and cutting boards as well as ingredients like flour or sugar. In addition to storage freezers, the facility has freezers capable of flash-freezing food.  Blue Ridge Food Ventures would assist in developing labels, advising them about licensing and public health inspections, and finding the best packaging for their products. 

These entrepreneurs designed their own website, prepared their own spreadsheets, and came up with a cycle of menus (which would change once a month). Using food that would freeze well, they focused on local, organic produce and meat, and began testing recipes.

 The “kaninis,” as they refer to themselves, take the orders they have received by Wednesday, shop for ingredients over the next two days, and come to Blue Ridge Food Ventures on the weekend to do the cooking and freezing. Once the food is flash-frozen, they store it in freezers until the following Wednesday when clients pick it up. Their cooking cycle is twice a month with two pick-up dates.

The Kanini chefs are frequently assisted by Leichssenring’s mother, Leah Sawvell. Sawvell does much of the food prep and clean-up as they go, Patton often creates the sauces, and Leichssenring likes to do the assembly (putting food in the containers so it looks as good as it will taste). They rent a section of the big walk-in refrigerator at Blue Ridge Food Ventures to hold the ingredients for the day or two between shopping and cooking, and rent a portion of freezer space to hold the finished meals for the three days until pick-up. They have now developed four cycles of menus and average approximately 25 orders for each scheduled pick-up. Because meals must be pre-ordered, Kanini’s buys exactly what is required for that week.

Update: Kanini's is now located at 1196 N. Main Street in Waynesville, N.C. Learn more at www.kaninis.com.