Meet this week’s Absa Smal Business Friday featured small business – Khayelitsha Cookies.
Khayelitsha Cookies is a remarkable business founded by Adri Williams, that empowers previously unemployed women, from surrounding informal settlements, by providing training and employment in the baking industry.
It all started when Adri Williams, a corporate professional searching for deeper fulfillment, encountered a life-changing moment. While volunteering at a hospital through her church, she met Noluthando, a severely malnourished baby fighting for survival. As Noluthando grew stronger, so did Adri’s resolve to make a meaningful difference in her community.
Alongside three like-minded women, Adri took over a struggling cookie business with a bold mission: to empower unemployed women from Khayelitsha. What started as a small-scale operation soon flourished into a thriving enterprise. Today, Khayelitsha Cookies employs nearly 100 people, producing over 80,000 handcrafted cookies daily. Staying true to its roots, the company sources 98% of its ingredients locally, including flour from a nearby mill for its Homegrown range.
The ladies are trained to hand bake and hand pack KCC’s delicious cookies, brownies and cheese straws, in their food-safe factory in Beaconvale, Parow. This reduces unemployment in the area and gives the ladies a sense of well-deserved dignity. They are also proud that the people who work for them not only enjoy what they do but take pride in their baking and being able to provide for their families.
In the start, they only supplied hotels with their delicious baked goods. Their first customers were Spier and Protea hotels, which believed in their vision and mission and remain their most loyal customers until today.
They slowly started approaching more hotel groups and their next break came with Ciro Beverage Solutions (who was also the previous employer of Adri Williams). They allowed KCC to bake cookies under their brand. Ciro also put them in contact with Garden Court Hotel group, and in one year they had to triple their production output to fulfil these orders.
This came with huge financial investments in renting another unit in the business park in Berkeley Road. Eunice and Adri had to go for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) training and with the help of consultants, implemented and developed an entire food safety system for Khayelitsha Cookies Company. This took them the better part of two years to get through all the processes, the training, and to eventually get the money together to improve the rented 90m2 warehouse space into a fully-fledged factory, that has staff canteens separated from production, fresh air flow systems in place, and extraction units.
This infrastructure and training upgrade allowed KKC to start producing for Nestle Ice Cream. They had to bake brownies and cut them into exact 1cm by 1cm blocks and ship them on pallets. Their proudest moment was in 2008 when the very first pallet of brownies was shipped. They worked hard to become profitable again and in 2011 they clinched another deal with Purity. This meant they had to rent a third unit in the business complex, but unfortunately, it was across the alleyway. With this additional unit, they had to redo their food safety paperwork and they had to eliminate additional food safety risks as they were now providing for a baby food company.
The Khayelitsha Cookie Company has won several awards but the one they are most proud of is the South African Customer Service Leadership Award for Success in Ensuring Customer Satisfaction given by Frost & Sullivan. This award was against the large biscuit manufacturers in South Africa, and they won.
The Khayelitsha Cookie Company are busy extending their cookie range in Clicks to include an adult cookie range. They have started to bake for Shoprite under the Homegrown range and extended to the
Oh My Goodness, the healthier kids range. In 2025, they hope to expand this range from three variants to five. Lastly, they have extended into international waters and their first two pallets of product have successfully shipped to their distributor in the USA called Purpusly and they are busy finalising their listing through a major well-known international brand.
In 2024, Khayelitsha Cookie Company received the National Community Award at the South African Small Business Awards – this prestigious awards programme celebrates the most outstanding businesses and the exceptional business people behind these successful and growing businesses.
Proudly South African, Khayelitsha Cookies proves that when women with vision come together, they can transform not only a business but an entire community.