Oyetola Isola: Co-Founder at West African Ready-Meal Company (Oyetty Meals)

Oyetty Meals are West African ready-meals that we launched earlier this year associated with the Samis Online brand. They are flavour-filled, mouth-watering ready-meals that offer an alternative to the existing range of ready-meals currently available in shops and larger stores.

We use only the freshest ingredients and have created original recipes that encompass the taste of West African food without the hassle of cooking! Our meals cater for everyone’s tastes, from meat stews and soups to vegan-friendly vegetable based recipes. It’s all about being authentic, we want to bring the taste of ‘home’ to our customers, as well as introduce West African food to new customers that are not familiar with this type of cuisine.

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

We noticed a lack of West African cuisine available in mainstream stores, particularly in the ready-meals section, so we decided to do our research into the ready-meal market. We learnt that the value of the current frozen meal sector in the UK is approximately worth £7.21 billion GBP according to a report carried out by The British Frozen Food Federation (BFFF) in 2022, which we believed would create a huge market opportunity for our West African ready-meal.

On average Brits buy over 3million ready-meals a day, so why not be included in that figure? Oyetty is a funky vibe to my name, Oyetola.

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

Oyetty meals is still in its infancy, but we have added more meals to the range and continue to do so. We have also launched a charitable side to Oyetty meals, called The Oyetty Foundation.

This charity donates 5% of all Oyetty ready-meals to families in Nigeria that have children with special needs. Our ultimate goal is to work with families closer to home in the West Midlands, where we plan to host a support group to help parents speak to other parents going through the same thing and find shared support and understanding. We have found there is quite often a lack of education around special needs within our community and we wanted to find a way of giving back.

What can we hope to see from Oyetty in the future?

As we add more and more recipes to our Oyetty Meals range, we have plans to approach and collaborate with UK supermarkets in the future, as we feel we can offer them a range of ready-meals that will really excite customers and attract a loyal customer-base! Ultimately we want to reach households that have never even tried West African food, and show them what they have been missing! The ready-meals are the perfect introduction to this type of cuisine, and could result in Brits opting for say our Afang Soup, or Rice Stew instead of their usual Shepherd’s Pie or Chow-mein ready meal!

We plan to be the first ethnic minority catering business to cater for a Royal Family’s event in the nearest future……Smiles