Having a coffee without having to spend on an order-out, having a healthy snack that is easy to prepare, or cooking a healthy and budget-friendly meal, hopefully in one pot and half an hour, could be the prime momenta for three recent startups that are slowly but surely reaching out to many more clients: ReقQaf, Bozour, and Zest.

It has been only a few months since Ali Khattab launched a line of filtered coffee sachets. ReقQaf is a blend of English and Arabic letters for the increasing number of Egyptians who love filtered coffee.

According to Khattab, the idea is quite simple. “We don’t need special coffee machines that cost an arm and a leg, and we don’t need any special kitchen utensils, like plungers or moka pots; it is just a mug, some boiling water, and the sachet,” he said.

Taking coffee places
 

 The sachets that Khattab is producing do not drip in the mug of hot water – with or without a string. “The idea is to allow the water to slowly pour on the coffee to allow it to drip, just like with a dripping coffee pot,” Khattab said.

Instead, Khattab used a technique he originally saw in Japan, which they used for coffee, tea, or matcha, and found it very interesting. The square sachet has two cartoon handles to the right and left to hang on the top of the coffee cup once the sachet is slowly torn open. Then, water is slowly introduced until the coffee is ready – with an unmistakable strong aroma.

Khattab uses single-source coffee that he imports from Columbia, which is “a clear favourite for the Egyptian coffee lovers,” Kenya, Ethiopia, and Brazil. He plans to further diversify sources, both from Africa and South America. He knows that coffee is a particular acquired taste zone. However, he is still willing to venture out of confidence that the coffee market in Egypt has been fast diversifying in the past couple of decades.

“Originally many people were into Turkish coffee and instant coffee, but during the past 20 years or so, this has been changing, especially with the introduction of big coffee chains, and people have gotten into new coffee-drinking modes,” he said. “Many opt for the filtered coffee, but not everyone has the particular pot required, and this is the void that ReقQaf is filling,” Khattab said.

Bozour

“Some people have their coffee machines at home but not at the office; if people go on a vacation, they don’t necessarily land in a place where their coffee cravings are properly satisfied, and some people love to have a fresh coffee while spending the day on the beach with a good book; this is what I was thinking of when I launched my startup,” he said.

Apart from the imported coffee, he said, the project is 100 percent dependent on local products. “The sachets, the boxes, and the bags of the boxes are all made in Egypt,” he said.

Khattab added that in line with the “conscious consumption” mentality, he recycles the sachet bags when they are returned to avoid anti-environmental waste.

The launch of ReقQaf took Khattab and his spouse Sofia, an engineer, about a year of trials and tasting.

In his early 30s, Khattab studied political science and worked as a banking startup consultant. His experience has certainly helped his own project. The idea, he said, is to scan the market, consider the void, and work on filling it — with a targeted audience in mind and “with faith that a small startup could compete with the big brands.”

Another element for the success of a startup with the potential, he added, is to pick a small and interested team, pursue limited gains at the initial phase, and come up with unconventional promotion techniques that are compatible with the targeted clientele. “Online, we created the ReقQaf Bar where ideas for blending the coffee with types of milk, sparkling water, or even juices,” Khattab said. He is also considering pairing with cookies or chocolate “that are made in Egypt; this is a requirement,” he said.

Zest

Seeds of energy
 

Rana Yehia, the founder of Bzour (seeds), has a similar account of moving from the banking world to that of startups.

Hers was a rather incidental move that was inspired by the increasing trend of health-conscious eating during the COVID years when many people were either overeating or overexercising – and in both cases trying to look for something that gives them energy and not too much weight.

Like other people, Yehiya was trying out different options of snacks that they could have to boost their morale, energy, memory, and immunity.

For herself, her husband, and her two young boys, Yehiya tried different mixes of seeds, nuts, dates, and honey. Thus, she did much research regarding the nutrition facts and health benefits of every single item.

Yehiya was comfortable with her decision to invest in her new project, so she left her job and focused on getting Bozour running.

She said the idea was not to get into a pointless competition with the many and increasing healthy snacks offered by many stores but rather to offer something different. One thing that was different, she said, was a commitment to organic choices as much as possible. Another thing, Yehiya added, was to offer sufficient varieties that could cater to different age brackets, different tastes, and different needs.

An encouraging factor was the fact that healthy eating and immunity preservation persisted well beyond the COVID years of 2020 to 2023.

The tricky part for this startup, however, was expanding, which seemed very inviting with the increasing online demand. This, Yehiya said, required financial partnership and support, which she found through Shark Tank — a TV show designed to get big businesses to help budding entrepreneurs with potential.  

Getting the zest
 

According to Mohamed Hany, a co-founder of Zest, an online startup that expands food content beyond recipes and reviews, there are so many potential startups making an imprint through social media — some more on Instagram and some more on TikTok. The founding idea behind Zest was finding a way to help followers make sense of what is there and decide on their best solutions.

Zest is the brainchild of a group of partners, mostly from the banking or information technology world, like Khattab and Yehiya. It started in 2016 with the idea of providing original food content in Arabic.

“There was sporadic content here and there, but for the most part the serious food content websites that got a lot of attention were in English,” he said. He added that, from a business point of view, this was a void to fill.

It took a few months for the founding team of Zest to line up a group of the best 10 producers of content on Egyptian food and then a few more months to transfer the mostly written material into video material that is concise and appealing. “The scrolling mood is about a one-minute video, as we learned, and this was what we opted for,” he said. The initial list included food anthropologists, food bloggers, and some chefs. Today, this list has moved from 10 to 150.

During the COVID years, Hani said the focus was to review foods and recipes that are essential for immunity boosting and recovery. However, overall, Zest is about approaching food as a multi-disciplinary material. “When we talk about food, we talk about ingredients, nutrition, budgets, culture, cooking techniques and presentation styles, and much more,” he said. “This is why we have been working with writer and researcher Omar Taher on a series under the title of “Taste of Things” that connects food to its social context,” he added.

For eight years, Hani said Zest has been providing very modern recipes with some of the most recently introduced ingredients to the shelves of grocery stores in Egypt, and we also review traditional recipes from old cookbooks, like the quintessential “Basics of Cooking – by Nazira Nicolas and Bahia Osman.” In 2017, one year after the launch, Zest created its YouTube channel to broadcast its material, with special programming for specific seasons, including Christmas, Ramadan, Lent, and Sham El-Nessim.

With larger varieties of original content, Zest was well placed to move from the quick one-minute videos to the three-minute videos that attracted a wider audience. Today, he said Zest produces different-length videos, with some ranging between 10 and 15 minutes.

Today, Hani said more and more people, especially the younger generations aged 18 to 38, go online to look for a recipe or to get acquainted with food trends, “much more than TV programmes, for sure.” “This is why there is always room for more food-related startups to come online,” he added.