Betty Bifwoli is the founder of Kenyan Delicacies Den Haag, Netherlands offering dine-ins, takeaways and deliveries.
Betty, a lawyer by profession, started the hotel due to difficulty in accessing authentic Kenyan foods in the European country.
Here is her story as told by WoK.
Restaurant business in Netherlands
Betty moved to Netherlands some 13 years ago, and it did not take long before she realized how it was hard to find Kenyan foods.
Thanks to her passion in cooking and support from close friends, she started her restaurant in 2018.
“I started cooking for my friends, I used to host them, they liked my food and encouraged me to start the business,” Betty said.
From the encouragement from friends to start her own restaurant, she registered it as a business and started looking for a location.
She finally set up a physical location and hit the ground running.
In an interview with Chams Media, Betty noted that her clients are both Dutch people and Kenyans working in Netherlands.
“My typical clients are normal Dutch people, there are a lot of offices around. We also have a lot of Kenyans who work for international organizations
“They come mostly on weekends when they have time. They support me very much and every month I do Kenyan events where people come to have a good time,” she said.
The most selling product in her restaurant is beans and chapati.
Law
Betty is a lawyer by training and an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya holding a degree from Moi University.
“I did pupilage and everything, and immediately thereafter my husband got a job in The Hague and relocated here to the Netherlands. As the wife that’s how I joined him,” she said.
As a lawyer, she has done internships with among others International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
“I felt like it wasn’t my calling, I wasn’t happy doing it and opted to do food because I like bringing people together through food,” Betty said.
Other than running her restaurant, Betty also sells Kenyan souvenirs and runs a consultancy firm called Bifwoli Legal Consultancy.
Challenges
Betty cited inflation as the major challenge in her business and shortages of basic food products such as flour and oil.
“In the last one year the prices have really been going up, we’ve shortage of food products. The prices have almost doubled and we can’t increase the prices,” she explained.
She sources her spices and food products from Kenya.
