Caroline Wanjiru Mambo

When COVID-19 shuttered Caroline Wanjiru Mambo’s restaurant business, she and her business partner divided what remained, equipment, supplies, whatever could be salvaged and repurposed. Caroline’s share included some sacks of potatoes. With nowhere to sell them and bills that still needed paying, she did what the moment required: she opened her car boot and started selling with her residential estate. At the height of a pandemic that had paralyzed formal commerce, demand for those potatoes kept growing. People knew where to find her, and they kept coming back.

That observation, that the demand was real, consistent, and scalable, became Caroline’s post-COVID obsession. By the time the world reopened, she was no longer thinking about restaurants. She was thinking about potatoes: how to process them, how to supply institutional clients reliably, how to build a business around a crop that Kenya grows in abundance but loses too much of to post-harvest waste. Wedgehut Foods was the answer she built.

By the time Caroline was recognized as 1st Runner Up in the Outstanding Value-Adding Enterprise category at the 2024 WAYA competition, the business had grown to 25 employees and was generating revenues above $400,000 annually. But she was operating out of a facility that was quietly limiting what the team could do, a constraint that was hard to see in the revenue line but visible in the margins.

The prize money, $8,000, went into fixing exactly that. Wedgehut relocated to a new factory space better suited for food production, improved the factory flow, and brought in consultants to implement a food management system rigorous enough to pass the audits that serious institutional clients demand. It was not a glamorous use of funds. It was the right one.

The results showed up quickly. Revenue dipped slightly from $438,400 to $407,600, relocations are always disruptive, but profitability increased by 12%. The new facility had already improved efficiency enough that the margin story was moving in the right direction, and the food management system helped convert clients who had previously been watching and waiting. New business followed the certifications.

The FAO mentorship programme that came alongside the WAYA recognition added another layer. Caroline’s mentorworked with her  on investor readiness, burnout management, and leadership, the combination of practical and personal that founders in growth mode most need. That relationship produced a concrete outcome: in January 2025, Wedgehut received a $50,000 patient capital followed by a shortlisting for the Tony Elumelu Foundation grant.

Away from the factory, Caroline had set a target of training 50 farmer groups across Kenya in climate-smart potato farming practices, a supply chain investment as much as a community one. She reached 35 in the period, signing up over 3,000 farmers into an ongoing engagement network. At least 150 women and youth are now active across Wedgehut’s value chain from farm to factory floor, with the team growing from 25 to 35 overall.

There is a version of Caroline’s story that starts with entrepreneurial vision and ends with a thriving processing company. The truer version starts with a pandemic, a car boot, and a few sacks of potatoes, and the particular kind of attention that turns an emergency into an idea worth building a life around.