Township is the next business frontier, not a place for charity – Yebo Fresh

The spaza shops, bakers and other retail outlets running their small business in townships have a heap of challenges. They close often to go and source products, carry cash and have no access to credit. Intrigued by these township markets, Jessica Boonstra, originally from the Netherlands, started her business, Yebo Fresh from her garage, delivering products to a local township. When Covid hit, she became “really entrepreneurial” and with “a bit of bluff” secured funding from the Scheinberg Fund to build infrastructure to distribute food parcels. Since then, Boonstra, with the help of her team, including sales and marketing director, Lerato Ramollo, has grown Yebo Fresh from a “playful young company” into a proper scale-up with R41.5 million in annual sales in the last financial year. Boonstra told BizNews, “People keep looking at a township as a place for charity, but maybe not so much for business, whereas it is actually the next frontier.” – Linda van Tilburg Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices