After working for 17 years at a parastatal, Bilqees Essa decided to follow her passion by starting a business in the food industry. Today, her company makes flatbread sold nationally under the Checkers private label brands, The Bakery and Simple Truth.
Essa started Comessa Food Services with her husband Zoegdie in 2005, hoping to provide canteens in corporate offices with a healthy alternative to the snacks they were serving. At the time, the company produced popcorn.
After starting the business, she and Zoegdie travelled to Europe in 2006 where they found themselves eating street food since they did not have a lot of money to spend. During this trip, the couple found that tortillas were not only cheap, but very popular.
“We were looking for more products to add to our range and during that trip, we realised that we could sell flatbread. A year after starting the business, we moved from just producing popcorn to adding flatbread to the mix,” she said.
Based in Muizenberg, Cape Town, Comessa Food Services now makes tortilla wraps and other traditional flatbreads such as roti, naan and pita bread that it supplies in bulk to office canteens and retailers.
Essa and her husband struggled initially to secure funding to buy the necessary equipment to make tortillas on a commercial scale.
“When you go to the banks and say ‘please provide us with a loan’ and you have nothing to stand on, you can imagine what they will say. We didn’t have what the banks were asking from us. There was nothing we could put in place as collateral.”
When you go to the banks and say ‘please provide us with a loan’ and you have nothing to stand on, you can imagine what they will say
With a small industrial tortilla press going for about R52,000, the couple decided to find ways to build their own. Essa said this took a lot of research but eight months later, Comessa Food Services had its prototype and started selling flatbread.
“At the time making it ourselves cost R80,000 so I ate bread and butter for a year, but we still have some of that machinery today, close to 20 years later. We always say we are not only proudly South African with what we produce but we are proud of the fact that we started with machines we built locally.”
Looking back, Essa said market access had also been a major hurdle. Comessa Food Services was self-funded from the beginning, with the couple investing all their profits into the business.
“We came from literally disadvantaged backgrounds, knocking on doors and we had to prove ourselves that we can be the industrial halal manufacturer of choice.”
In 2012, the couple tried to convince Checkers to stock their flatbread and serve it at the canteen of its head office in Cape Town. Essa said a buyer showed interest but advised them to improve the packaging and position their product as something the retailer could put on its shelves.
“We had our product packaged in transparent plastic, we were using a marker to label the products and that wouldn’t work with retailers. This is when we started formalising our packaging,” she said.
The company started off as a supplier to a few Checkers stores in the Western Cape. Some 14 years later it supplies stores across the country. Comessa Food Services employs more than 100 people, 65% of the workforce is female and more than 70% are young people.
This business was among the winners at the Shoprite Group’s 2024 supplier of the year awards held last week.
“We are truly humbled by this award and would like to thank the Shoprite Group for their trust and belief in us. It’s been a hard journey, but their continued support has been a cornerstone of our success,” said Essa.
She said their long-term goal is to expand the company’s product range and reach more businesses.
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