In Nairobi’s industrial zones over 2 million workers and residents rely on informal food vendors for their meals. These unlicensed vendors sell food that whilst cheap, is unhealthy, unhygienically prepared and lacking in nutritional value. MloZone is changing the status quo by producing affordable, healthy and hygienically prepared food from a large central kitchen which are then sold through outlets located in large factories.
Registered in 2019, MloZone was built as a replication of Homeals India, adapted to the Kenyan context. Combining the lessons learned from Homeals with the expertise of local entrepreneurs MloZone is realizing a solution to the three-fold nutrition challenge faced by urban workers; affordability, hygiene and nutritional value.
MloZone is working with factories to serve meals on premises, a break from the currently informal factory adjacent vendors, and creating the opportunity to efficiently access a market that is largely ignored by formal food companies. Costs are kept low by the use of a centralized kitchen and cosmetically unacceptable fresh foods. Importantly, MloZone will not displace existing vendors but offer them the opportunity of employment within their outlets.
Proving healthy, nutritious food will go a long way towards combating Kenya’s seemingly paradoxical problems of malnutrition and obesity. MloZone is set on meeting its ambition of serving 5,000 meals a day from 10 outlets in the next 3 years – creating 50 jobs and generation $1M annually.