About Us
Inspiring you, inspires us.
We at Smart Kitchen believe cooking and eating is an integral part of intimate family time. Since we value family time, our goal is to improve the cooking experience, and therefore improve the lives of many households which use our product. We try to fulfill this goal of ours, by being cost-effective, and focusing on the ease of use of our product.
Our briquettes are not only smoke-free, which will improve the air on the kitchen, they are also environmentally friendly, being produced by what some people would see as waste. By giving these resources another life, we don’t only make the most out of what we have, we also improve people’s circumstances doing so. Spending less on briquettes than charcoal can enable a family to buy better ingredients for a more nutritious meal.
Having these benefits is why we started our business and why we at Smart Kitchen are excited for you to get to know our product.
Our Story
As a young child, growing up in a caring family, cooking and sharing food was always important to us. Not being able to afford gas and electricity, our only alternative was charcoal, also referred to locally as “Amanda”. Because charcoal was so costly, we had to reduce our daily meals three to one per day.
Because charcoal is not very affordable for the average Ugandan family, I began to think about what a possible alternative could be. Since the environment is important to us at Smart Kitchen, having a clean source of energy was an important goal to reach.
Having started out with no capital, the process began with the carbonization of organic waste such as banana peels, cassava peels, sugarcane waste, and maize combs which after doing some research, turned out to be great organic fuels.
The way it worked was drying these organic products among others, to create a useable product. Again and again, the output would be unusable ash. At one point, I received funding from Jangu international, in order for me to learn the skills of briquette making and to purchase the necessary raw materials to make them with high quality in mind. This together with a lot of trial and error helped me to create the product we are selling today.
With the help of Kijjambu Christopher, who lent me his machinery because he believed in the product and understood the pain of households using charcoal, we were able to start the production of our Smart Kitchen Briquettes. During this time other people started joining the Smart Kitchen team, helping the brand improve the quality of life all around Uganda by achieving lower costs for households and improving the cooking experience at home.
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Nantongo Barbra Jane - CEO of Smart Kitchen
Meet The Team
