From eight chest freezers squeezed into an Umhlanga garage to supplying frozen ready meals nationwide for Spar’s prestigious Signature Selection range, the journey of Durban-born business We Are Food is the ultimate South African success story.
Founded thirteen years ago by sisters Jane Bisset and Amy Weare Laubscher, this homegrown enterprise has evolved into a certified 500m² food manufacturing powerhouse, proving that passion paired with the right corporate backing can yield extraordinary results.
Baking love into the business model
The seed for We Are Food was planted in 2013. Drawing on culinary training and a deep-seated family passion for cooking, Bisset began preparing home-style frozen dishes for relatives and neighbours. The inspiration was relatable: a busy working mother in the family craved quick, convenient meals without sacrificing the wholesome quality of home cooking.
Demand exploded. By 2015, the fledgling kitchen outgrew the garage and moved into a small industrial facility in Durban North. In 2016, Laubscher joined her sister full-time, bringing commercial expertise while Bisset led operations. Today, their operation employs more than 30 people, has supplied major local retailers, and has even exported to the United Arab Emirates.
Yet, despite scaling up drastically, their guiding philosophy remains unchanged: “We still stay true to our roots: a passion for food and, more importantly, love for the people who eat it. That is the secret ingredient that makes our meals taste as though they were made at home,” the sisters share.
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A decade-long relationship, built store by store
We Are Food’s journey with Spar started modestly in 2015 when a family friend persuaded the manager of Holdens Spar on Florida Road to host just one freezer. Bisset and Laubscher spent countless hours in-store running tastings, merchandising, and chatting directly with shoppers. Impressed by the customer response, nearby store owners began reaching out to stock the range.
The true turning point arrived in 2022, when We Are Food joined the inaugural intake of the Spar Supplier Development Programme. Aiming to achieve Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) certification, the sisters faced a daunting technical hurdle.
“What seemed like a daunting, almost unachievable task became a reality with the encouragement and support of the Spar Supplier Development Programme team. It gave us people we could turn to when we didn’t know the answer, and ultimately helped us build a stronger business,” they explain.
To date, the Spar Supplier Development Programme has assisted 3 188 micro and small food businesses, with 424 suppliers achieving full food-safety compliance and 1 063 actively progressing. Today, compliant suppliers showcase 6 937 stock-keeping units across bakeries, beverages, and groceries on the Spar Marketplace.
Yolisha Govender, national supplier development specialist at the Spar Group, notes that compliance is about far more than ticking boxes.
“Food-safety compliance can be one of the biggest barriers between a great local product and a sustainable retail business. Our role is to help suppliers build the systems, knowledge and confidence they need to cross that threshold. The real success is when that capability translates into new customers, new markets, greater production and ultimately more jobs. We Are Food is a powerful example of that journey,” says Govender.
Scaling up and sharing the feast
Securing the order to manufacture gourmet frozen ready meals for Spar’s national Signature Selection range brought an exciting new set of operational demands. Supported by flexible dispatch mechanisms through Spar Encore, We Are Food adjusted shift patterns and expanded production capacity without compromising quality.
More importantly, this growth translates into community impact. Operating at capacity, the company is hiring new staff and transitioning casual workers into permanent roles. True to their grassroots ethos, Bisset and Laubscher recruit for passion and potential; of their 30+ employees, only two are qualified chefs, with the rest upskilled in-house.
Reflecting on their scaling journey, the sisters highlight the reality of small-business growth, saying, “For a small manufacturer, a big opportunity also comes with big responsibility. You have to buy ingredients, produce at scale, pay your team and support your own suppliers before that growth is realised.
“When a retailer understands those pressures and works with you practically, it gives a small business the ability to say yes to opportunities that might otherwise feel out of reach.”
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Resilience, motherhood, and sisterhood
Behind the commercial success lies a deeply human story. Between 2019 and 2023, Bisset and Laubscher welcomed four children while steering their company through the Covid-19 pandemic, severe civil unrest, and catastrophic Durban floods.
They credit their survival and success to family, dedicated staff, and a strong network of women.
Their advice to emerging female entrepreneurs is straightforward and empowering: “There have been so many moments when we could have looked at the next step and decided it was too big for us. What we’ve learnt is to ask anyway – ask for the meeting, ask the question, ask for advice and put yourself forward for the opportunity. You may not know exactly how you’re going to get there when you start, but that shouldn’t stop you from starting.”
As the sisters work alongside Spar to develop new gourmet dishes for national shelves, their story stands as a beacon for Women’s Month; proving what happens when female-led ambition meets practical, sustainable support.
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