Hi my name is Natasha Alani and I graduated from the MBA in June 2017. I am from San Francisco although my family comes from East-Africa (and culturally we are Indian. We are from a 100 different places)!
I came to do an MBA with the sole purpose of growing the business that I am going to talk to you about today, which is called Kiffin. I started Kiffin in 2013 when I was in San Francisco. While my background was in Finance and I had done some work in mergers and acquisition, my focus has always been social entrepreneurship and social justice. I used the money I got from selling my shares to start a business and transition into the social economy.
Over time, I started to understand the strengths and weaknesses of social businesses, non-profits and social justice in general and developed my own point of view about what I thought would be a good answer to some of the issues we are facing. The issue of accessible food is important to me, in addition to education and employment training. When I was younger, I had experiences with the challenges of accessing healthy food.
In general, it is a challenge to obtain a good education and the job that you need to move your career forward when you lack a community and an environment that’s there to foster that. That is why, all I have ever done is to work on these problems in any way I could. I started imagining Kiffin, which, in short, is an aim to bring the Tiffin system (which has been around for ages in India) to a North-American model.
What is a Tiffin?
It is the de-facto way that people in major cities in India get their lunches when they are working in the professional world. Often, the culture is aware of the negative impact of eating out regularly, so people will contract with someone to have them supply lunches on a regular basis. It provides more nutritious meals for the worker, an income for the supplier and benefits for all those who are in the supply chain. (NDLR: Typically, they are served in a tin lunch box, also referred to as Tiffin.)
Tell us a bit about your background story.
My family is actually Indian but went to Uganda and brought with them a lot of their country’s traditions (including the tiffin system) to Africa. Our family then came to Canada in the 1970s as a result of a military coup in Uganda. In the 1990s, the President of Uganda came to North America and invited the people who had been asked to leave decades ago to come back and help rebuild the economy. My father took me and my sisters back to Uganda and hoped for a better life. We went back but starting from scratch, my dad found it difficult to provide for the family, so he went to the woman next door and asked her to fill tiffins for his daughters with the regular food she was making for her family. Every day at 5:00 pm, the tiffins would show up at our front door; we never knew what was inside and that was the most exciting part of our day! It was an economically viable solution to a difficult situation but as young people, it was also exciting, delicious and it gave us a sense of dignity. This was one of my favorite childhood memories and it stayed with me all this time.
How did you start Kiffin?
As I was looking at what was going on in San Francisco when I was working there in Social Entrepreneurship, I saw that more and more people were having a hard time eating. I realized that San Francisco was a plentiful city with many amazing products, but where many people could not afford to eat. The ones who can are not aware of the ones who cannot. This was troubling to me because the populations I am talking about were not just very low income families. They were also nurses, teachers, social workers... In other words, they were people who do physically demanding work, who are very important to the health of the city, and who are sacrificing their health because they cannot access good food. Even as the director of a non-profit, I was falling into that same situation where I was not able to provide myself with the nutrition I needed to continue to serve the people I cared about. I thought about what to do and how to eat well and automatically, my mind jumped at when I was a kid and was eating out of tiffins. I drew on that experience and took some money out of my savings to import some tiffins. Then, I started a tiffin system for social workers in downtown San Francisco. The focus was on creating recipes that were really nutritious but inexpensive. Drawing on my experience in Africa, my Indian culture, travels from the past, I was able to create recipes that were not only interesting, but also very affordable and healthy.
Why did you decide to do an MBA ?
The business started to take off and there was a lot of interest from the population! However, when came the time to scale, the only way I would be able to survive was to charge upwards of $20 USD. While there is a willingness for the public to pay for that, there is no willingness on my side to sell at that price. I took a step back, applied to McGill and made a plan to get a graduate education to figure out a way to scale this business while continuing to meet the objective of making food accessible. I knew that getting a graduate education was going to be vital for me to build a truly viable social business.
Why did you choose McGill for your MBA?
McGill was a clear decision, particularly because of the conversations that I had with the university prior to joining. Everyone I spoke to at the university took the time to get to know what my goals were. I felt comfortable in informing them about what my real concerns were about graduate school and I didn’t feel this way with any other school. This allowed me to explore any hesitation I may have had. I felt safe talking about my goals and my reasons to go to school. In addition, I see the future of Kiffin on an international level and the university is inherently international. The city of Montreal is also inherently international and I was looking for a brand name that could help me carry my vision forward.
When I looked at the schools that had the reputation that I was looking for, I felt that many schools had very large classes and that it would make me feel like I was a number, which is not what I wanted for my graduate education. Having a small class was a definite perk! It was extremely important to me to see each person’s commitment and to have the opportunity to grow with a group of international people who would fundamentally change the way I see the world.
Did it pay off?
Absolutely! Within one month of starting school, I started the business in Montreal. I had the benefit of already having developed the brand and the vision and with that, I applied to the McGill Dobson Center for Entrepreneurship's Lean Launch Preparation Program. The program is amazing because it allowed me to also bring a non-McGill student to participate in the program with me. As a result, I brought to the program the chef of Kiffin, who also happens to be my husband. We immediately entered a community of entrepreneur/ builders to help us start growing our business. From there, we met other entrepreneurs and mentors and were able to start testing our product and our business concept in a new city. It quickly gave us exposure and access to influential people within Montreal.
Before we knew it, the word had gotten out to my classmates and professors about what we were trying to do. This is what I find the most exciting about this experience. As soon as they knew what we were trying to do, everyone conspired to help us move forward: from choosing us for any one of their catering events, to giving us opportunities to speak about the business, to giving us feedback, to lending a hand, volunteering time, making deliveries, etc. These are all things that my classmates and my professors did for us.
As a result, we were able to incorporate in Quebec by the end of the first semester and our sales started to take off. While I was getting an education, I could apply every lesson I learnt in real time. Some people question how I was able to manage it, but I feel I was a much better student because of my business. Thanks to Kiffin and the day to day application of the business concepts that I am learning, I have done incredibly well in classes that I traditionally thought I would not do well in. It was a reinforcing learning experience.
There is no doubt that the community and the opportunities that came because of the people around me have been irreplaceable and incredibly important to the success of my business and the place where we are today.
About Natasha & Kiffin
Instagram: www.instagram.com/cafekiffin
Facebook: www.facebook.com/kiffin.eats
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