Denis Opudo
The global frozen food production is at $35 billion industry with $1.7 billion profit realized. But, the industry is going through a different revolution in this decade. The industry is moving to popular ethic food from traditional entrees. This is according to New York-based Strategic Resource Group. Hoyo Company is maximizing the revolution by realizing its customers. The Somali based local food company was founded on 15th July 2015. The Company founded by Miriam Mohamed and Matt Glover has eight employees.
Hoyo started with the aim of creating more job opportunities for the locals. The underutilization of the Somali cuisine prompted the two to put up the business. Hoyo offers quality, delicious ethnic cuisine besides filling ethic food production gap. Matt and his wife Miriam are well-educated individuals. Matt holds a degree in philosophy from Ohio State University. He also has a Masters in Global and Cultural studies from Bethel University. The wife has master’s degree in plant science, Fresno State, California. She also holds Master’s degree in Statistics from Syracuse, New York.
Matt has always enjoyed traveling and interacting with people from different backgrounds. He had to stay for a year in Rome Italy and have some time in South and Eastern Asia. Having stayed in Phillips neighborhood helped them to interact more with Somalis. That gave them a chance to learn about Somali culture. The most enjoyable part of them is the Somali food.
They never hesitated to start up a company and make the food more available in the United States. The company uses Somali mothers in making the food. The women have the needed quality in Somali food preparation. With Sambusa as the main product, the company has been received well by the locals. Sambusa is a triangular pastry filled with spiced beef or Lentils. After parking the food, it’s distributed to delis and grocery stores in the Twin Cities.
Hoyo has some advisory boards of experienced individuals who help in case of a problem. The main source of help has come from Food Solutions and General Mills Company. General Mills helps food startups in upcoming markets. In the beginning, the main targeted group was the Somali Community. This becomes challenging since most of them preferred the homemade Sambusa. It forced the Company to focus much on the non-Somali community.
The main challenge to the company was spacious kitchen space. It has been hard for the company to use the shared kitchen space in the Twin City. This is because they major in meat products. But, VEAP, a food shelf in Bloomington allowed them to use their commercial kitchen. The founders are working on bringing personal skills and strengths to the company. The continuous checkups by USDA don’t allow the company to share kitchen spaces or use incubators.
The company won Innova which is a social entrepreneurial contest. They depended on that and seed investment as their source of funding. But they currently depend on angel investors and revenues for fundings. The company targets to employ more than 100 Somali women in 2-3 years. One million Cups St Paul allowed the company to get feedback by pitching their business. The pitching helped them to get valuable feedback from various sources.
