By Kefiloe Kajane
Owner of The Lick, Tlali Mapetla, has said that his love for cooking and the imposition of lockdowns due to Covid-19 lockdowns led to him to star his company.
The Lick is a company that produces different flavours of organic sauces with vegetables and pickles from a family farm of Mapetla. The farm supplies The Lick and Open Season which are both sauce companies.
The latter is owned by his father.
Mapetla indicated that starting The Lick for him was not a business but a hobby at first. He said because he loves food and cooking, he was struggling to find sauces that he would enjoy. He decided to make homemade sauces for himself.
“During braai season with my friends and family I would make sauces and they would love it so much that they would ask me to make some for them. So during lockdown, because there was not much to do, I started making different sauces and my friends started buying and telling other people. That is how it started being a business.
“We make all kinds of sauces depending on what the client wants. We currently work only on orders because we are not able to accommodate a huge capacity. People have been loving our sauces and supporting us so much,” he said.
He indicated that his sauces are organic. This enables his business to cater for the vegetarians who usually have to hunt for the right menu.
He is hopeful that soon he will organise events to showcase the varying usages of sauces in order to make the food tasty. It is at these events where he will also introduce potential customers to a variety of makes.
He said though his business is doing well, it is challenging to run a food business “because one has to be careful and do a lot of research about how to preserve the food.”
Sometimes he has to buy some vegetables elsewhere as others are seasonal.
“Apart from the challenges, I would really like to see this business grow because already we have orders from outside the country. I would also like to see us being able to produce some of the ingredients that we use such as mustard seeds and not being forced to buy them. We will soon have our media pages where people can find us because they will be up before December,” he said.
The Lick and Open Season sauces can be found on +266 590 05499.
