Frustration and rejection greeted Winifred Emmanuel when she started her food blog from the NYSC Orientation camp.
She went from making meals and posting them online to become one of West Africa’s most sought after food brands. Her food brand, Zealicious Foods has blossomed beyond Winifred’s imagination.
According to her, she grew up in an average Nigerian family, determined to study hard, get a degree and a high paying job to give herself an above average comfort of life.
Winifred graduated from the University of Lagos with a degree in Economics and had very few white collar job options. With no high net worth connections, her career aspirations shifted before she even finished her NYSC.
While her friends opted for make-up artistry, hair-dressing etc, Winifred dared pursue her personal passion. According to her:
“Like everyone, I wanted to graduate from school, get a 9 to 5 job and make money. I went to school, got out of school and I had to serve.
“During my first 3 weeks at the NYSC camp, there was this program call SAED. It’s about entrepreneurship. We were to choose a particular skill and learn.
She described how her “ friends went into hair-making and make-up but I wasn’t interested. Something in me just said I should go into the catering class so I went there and I was interested in what I learnt.
“I had always loved to cook before camp, but after camp, I got the motivation to go into it fully. I would post some food online and I found that people would ask me for the recipe, the ingredients, so I decided to run a food blog.
“The food blog has metamorphosed into a TV channel which started on YouTube. It has today grown into a soaring subscriber base and a conventional TV series with audience around the world.
Winifred said that she “started as a blog, I wanted to move up to the next level, my plan was to have a TV show because it was difficult. I haven’t really proven myself and no one was willing to give me the opportunity.
“YouTube was a platform was a platform that was free. It is still free for everyone to join. When I discovered Youtube and created contents that had to do with culinary act, I put out tutorials.
Amazingly, when I started, the goal I set for myself was to get 5,000 subscribers. But in 6 months, we got 50,000 subscribers and in six moths, we got 50,000 subscribers and in one year, we are 100,000.
Winifred Emmanuel’s excitement is palpable as she says that “it’s a whole new world over here. I don’t even know which one to talk about first. For me, it about creating value, we have so many things in the pipeline.
“I am working on a cookbook which I’m going to launch, and there is a major platform we are working on too.”
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