Renowned personality Holy Dave has peeled back the layers of his culinary journey, candidly sharing that he started cooking out of necessity after losing his job due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
What began as a desperate measure transformed into a thriving business, defying his expectations and proving that even hobbies can become powerful avenues for success.
The multi-talented personality revealed this in an interview with TV47’s Betty Kyallo where he said before the pandemic hit in 2020, he was actively involved in a gig with a TV station, which required him to travel to schools. The sudden onset of COVID-19 brought this work to an abrupt halt, leaving him jobless and in a state he never anticipated.
“I was a jobless man. I won’t lie. There was a time when I had a certain TV station gig where we had to go around, we visit schools. When Covid-19 hit, there were no such activities,” Dave recalled.
The turning point came with the former president, Uhuru Kenyatta’s stay-at-home order. Faced with unexpected free time, Holy Dave impulsively pulled a liver from his freezer and started cooking playfully.
To his surprise, the live session saw numbers shooting up on his stories, a clear indication of audience engagement. This moment was a revelation, triggering his business acumen.
“I started with that liver and then I’m here I am. I pulled a liver out of the freezer and just started cooking the game. You see the numbers shooting up and I said oh my that’s the same business school I went to and I said oh this is scalability,” he recounted, applying lessons from his business school background.
The next day, he experimented with another dish, and the momentum continued to build, further encouraged by his mother, who suggested he bake her signature moist chocolate cake.
Holy Dave emphasizes that he is not merely a cook or a chef, but rather “in the business of cooking”.
It took him a year and a half to start monetizing his culinary endeavors, a period that tested his patience. He began by collaborating with small brands, providing a platform for local vendors selling items like fish, beef, tomatoes, and vegetables, strategically building his network from the ground up.
Despite his success, he hasn’t opened a restaurant, explaining that his finance and strategy background led him to calculate that a physical restaurant, requiring significant capital for an “Instagrammable” aesthetic, wasn’t the direction he wanted to pursue.
Beyond his culinary pursuits, Holy Dave, alongside his sister Joey Muthengi, established a foundation in 2015, further demonstrating his commitment to leveraging his platform for positive impact.
by moses sagwe
