We lost 65% of our monthly income due to the severe lockdown of the hospitality industry (majority of our business sales), and no one expected a nearly 9 month lockdown already with little or no tourism in South Africa.
HELP SAVE KHAYELITSHA COOKIES! – Your $1 donation can help keep our doors open and food on the table of almost 100 families !
OUR KHAYLITSHA COOKIES MISSION
We are a Cape Town based social enterprise with a mission to supply the best hand baked cookies to our clients in South Africa and Internationally, through superior quality, customer service and best possible pricing, whilst at the same time creating meaningful jobs and empowering previously unemployed women from informal settlements in the greater Cape Town region in South Africa. By empowering and up-skilling the almost 100 women working for us, we enable them to support at least 5 dependents with their income on a daily basis. For every extra 1000 cookies we sell per day, we create one more job, therefore putting food on the table for another whole family.
THE DEVASTATING OF COVID-19 EFFECT
On March 26th 2020, South Africa, went into lockdown very soon after the announcement that Covid-19 virus had arrived to our shores. In fact, we were one of the first countries to close international borders completely, basically shutting down the hospitality industry over night. This sector supplied a massive 65% of our monthly income and knew some tough decisions lay ahead. We decided from the onset of lockdown to NOT retrench people, as the majority of our staff did not graduate from high school, making them unemployable elsewhere – how would they survive? We rather made the decision to all take a reduced salary across the board. However, due to us hand baking and hand packing our cookies, in order to create employment, we only worked on a 1% profit margin even prior to the pandemic, meaning that when disaster struck ….. there was really zero room for reduced sales. In July we came so close to closing our doors after suffering immense losses. We were not going down without a fight though and so we begged and pleaded for sales to anyone who would listen. We also opened up an online shop to make it easier for people to make purchases and constantly tried to think of ‘out of the box’ ideas to keep the ship afloat. We are still here, but only just … we are literally hanging by a thread and has truly been the longest 9 months of our lives. We are currently trading on a day to day basis right now.
WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS … LITERALLY!
As if the global pandemic had not thrown us enough curve balls this year, due to immense problems with our existing factory building, which included a leaking roof at one point and one truly unreasonable landlord, we have been given no option but to relocate by the end of February 2021. Even though our landlord had signed a legal agreement for reduced rental during the lockdown period, he went back on his word and attached our assets, which we then had to fight in court. The case was scheduled for November 4th, but his attorneys did not even attend, meaning the case has now been moved to February 12th.
HOW CAN YOU BE PART OF OUR SOLUTION?
There way to sugar coat this … but in order to move Khayelitsha cookies out of this atrocious situation with our existing landlord, we need to ensure that any new building we relocate to complies with International food safety standards and this will cost R1.5 million South African Rand (see below for costs breakdown) . We are therefore in desperate need of your help to allow us to keep trading and ultimately continue to support the amazing ladies who work for us and their families. PLEASE ASK YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS TO DONATE $1 OR MORE IF YOU CAN …. VIA OUR VARIOUS PAYMENT PLATFORMS. (Feel free to advise us which of the below products you would like your donation to be used for! )
IF YOU ARE A SUPPLIER OF ANY OF THE BELOW PRODUCTS OR KNOW SOMEONE WHO IS … PLEASE CONSIDER SPONSORING ITEMS AS PART OF YOUR COMPANY’S SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY PROGRAMME
To reduce spam accounts, we are not currently allowing manual accounts to be created. But don’t worry, you will automatically be assigned an account upon your first order.
After placing your first order, please check your Inbox (as well as your Spam Bucket / Junk Folder) for your login credentials.
You will also be automatically signed in the moment you place your first order.
And an agent will get back to you via email to confirm your pre-order.
