N.A.N.A. Sarpong
Organic and Venia Foods are complementary companies inspired by a family's
enthusiasm for mushrooms. Rev. Derek
Sarpong and his daughter, Eirene Sarpong have innovated the common oyster
mushrooms into nutritious delicacies with mind blowing culinary taste and
texture. A novelty in food production uses every raw material effectively and
it is purely organic.
For Eirene Sarpong,
her passion to cook has driven her to the path of her business. Even though she
is a university graduate and has worked two jobs already, her cooking instincts
kept tingling until she found her purpose in adding value to what her father
has built over the years.
Rev. Derek Sarpong,
now visually impaired, continues to run his company with the know how he has
acquired and the years of experience in organic mushroom farming. The aims of
these two individuals wanting impact the world are to create jobs, alleviate
poverty and the health improvement of Ghanaians.
With the consistent
desire to eat healthy and stay healthy, the mushroom market has generated local
and international demand. Instead of exporting raw mushrooms Eirene Sarpong has
developed a perfect stock of Savour products with mushroom as the base. These
include Mushroom powder, Savour Mushroom shitor for vegetarians and non -
vegetarians alike, Savour Mushroom chips, mushroom kebab and Asumsa Organic
drink.
The most
interesting of all her product are the mushroom drink and the mushroom chips.
For the first time in Ghana, Venia Foods has succeeded in producing chips
fortified with protein: “normally chips don't have protein”. The Asumsa organic
drink (Kumboucha) is nothing you have tasted before.
Normally when people
think of healthy they think tasteless, but Venia Foods, by extension Miss.
Eirene Sarpong, is on a campaign to promote healthy as well as tasty diet with
the slogan “delightfully healthy”.
Having completed a
Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at the Ashesi University, she
hasn't relented in her decision to start a private business. She stated “I was
very scared in the beginning and I was asking myself 'what if'. Most of my 'what
ifs' were in the negative. So my best friend told me instead of thinking of
the negative 'what ifs' , I should take my pen and paper and write the positive
'what ifs'. If I asked myself what if people don't buy my product? I should
rather write what if people patronized my products and loved them? After I did that, I was a bit settled in my
heart that it could work out. It really drove me to do what do now. My
motivation for starting the business we, the positive 'what ifs' story.”
Her candid opinion to
the youth is that, “don't kill yourself to do a job that you don't like. I
think people do that because they are scared. I was scared when I started but
when you take a step and you are determined, everything works out.” You just
have to love what you do or you will realize in the end that you have not lived
life as you would have loved to.
Rev. Sarpong is always
exited when the youth show interest in mushroom production. He derives great
excitement form the positive feedback he receives about his know how. Rev.
Sarpong explains the investment potential and the significant returns it could
bring the country. “There have been times when we have received demands and we
couldn't meet them. Holland was the first to hear of us. They wanted us to
supply them 20 tonnes of dry mushroom every month”. Unfortunately we could not
meet their demand. He tells of the huge potential in the industry; yet under
utilized by Ghanaians.
Aside it’s monetary
and health benefit, the joint venture of this family creates jobs and training
for the youth. Even after going blind in a medical accident (accidental over
dose by a doctor), Rev. Sarpong still trains and employs people.
This is an inspiring
true event of a family that produces with joy and love, overlooking physical
limitations to do what they are passionate about.
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