Beyond expectations: what we learned from three Pre-Cook businesses transitioning to eCooking

Nyumbani Greens: Nairobi-based start-up offering African Indigenous Vegetables (AIV)

The start-up tackles urban household cooking time and energy usage by offering eight types of precooked and fermented AIV, precooked beans, githeri and indigenous kienyeji chicken. Different types of AIV and ways to prepare them (e.g., the amount of boiling water required) were introduced in our previous blog.

Before this project, Nyumbani Greens used LPG, charcoal and inefficient immersion water heaters to prepare their products. Their ambition during the five-month project was to demonstrate that eCooking can support a commercially viable, inclusive and climate-smart food business, while reducing reliance on charcoal and LPG. Through its business case, Nyumbani Greens was keen to generate evidence to support wider eCooking adoption in Kenya’s pre-cook sector.

As mentioned in the previous blog, the main production operation for Nyumbani Greens is water boiling: their team needs to boil around 1000 L of water per day for blanching AIV. With guidance from our commercial and institutional cooking expert, Jacob Fodio Todd, Nyumbani Greens identified the need for large-capacity specialised water boilers. The company acquired a 200 L solar water boiler and a 100 L eBoiler for periods of insufficient sunlight. With adequate solar irradiation available up to 80% of the year, this setup ensured near-zero electricity costs during these periods. Having large amounts of boiling water readily available reduced cooking and preparation times for AIV by over 70%, enabling production capacity to double from around 10000 to 20000 packs per month. To improve production of other products – beans and githeri – the company purchased three 10 L electric pressure cookers (EPCs) and an additional four 6 L EPCs for precooking chicken. Beans and githeri processing times dropped by 62%, while kienyeji chicken now takes 79% less time to cook compared with previous charcoal cooking.

Shorter production cycles mean Nyumbani Greens can now offer on-demand production for all their products: e.g., customers can use WhatsApp to order precooked chicken, which takes 25 min to cook, with total cooking plus delivery time reduced to 1 hr compared with 3 hrs before the EPCs. To accommodate the doubled production and demand, the company later acquired six 80 L freezers.

During the project, the site of Nyumbani Greens experienced frequent interruptions in grid electricity supply, making it unreliable for consistent daily operations: as production scaled, unreliable electricity became a critical operational risk. This highlighted the importance of a solar backup system. The team of Nyumbani Greens is already planning to fully solarise its operations, including food preparation, cold storage and increased distribution using electric scooters.

Check the full artictle on MEC's website.