Streets Ahead Live entrepreneur series: Ethiopic Kitchen

The answer came with McCain’s Streets Ahead Programme, which enabled her to gain the relevant knowledge via the various course workshops under the initiative. “I learned a lot on the course and most of it was new to me. The health and safety element was the easiest, while the most useful was managing stock. When you rent a place it involves regular stock management, but with street markets it is all about the logistics [of moving stock],” she explains.

Streets Ahead also provided her with the funding to buy the necessary kit for her venture, which she named Ethiopic Kitchen. On first trading at Cowcross Yards in London as part of KERB’s InKERBator programme, she admits to a level of “panic at first”, but she settled in and adapted her menu to providing eight options that are variations on two core platter dishes, with one based around mushrooms.

The dishes are prepared ahead of time at a rented space, which she says is a challenge because of the cost involved. However, it is a necessary move because undertaking such activity at home requires permissions from landlords, she says. This additional cost has to be factored into Tegegn’s future plans, to trade at other street food markets.

Tegegn says the six weeks at Cowcross Yards were extremely beneficial – partly because the location has a supply of electricity. This is a serious consideration for Tegegn because her cuisine requires her to use this utility rather than gas and some other markets only supply gas for cooking.

As well as building the brand through a presence at markets, she also has the longer-term vision, of launching a retail spice range and opening a combined community café and teaching space. This will enable her to continue with her initial objective of teaching people about Ethiopian cuisine.

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