A new startup called Safe Eat is providing Moroccan residents with new culinary choices.
The force behind this budding business is 21-year-old Siham Meftahi, an entrepreneur who leveraged her experience studying industrial engineering at École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Métiers in Casablanca (ENSAM) into a thriving food business.
Safe Eat was started in 2016, and started out with just two cooks; however, it quickly grew, and has recently gotten some publicity as one of nine top projects in the 2017 Google Search Stories competition.
“For me, my company is on the road to success,” Meftahi told Maghreb Newswire on Sept. 28 — but we are just in the beginning as far as the impact we make in the lives of people, especially when it
Meftahi talked about starting the company at the age of 19.
“As a young Moroccan lady, I was always impressed by the women, especially the Moroccan ones, by their ways of fighting against the traditions — and I felt responsible to continue the path of all these courageous women to finally realize a concrete change,” Meftahi said.
Meftahi said part of the business research that she conducted was field trips on which she met with women in need around the local area, and those with a willingness to affect change.
Citing “untapped culinary knowledge,” Meftahi said she studied the market and found that fast food, in her words, “constitutes a real danger for the consumer.”
The solution, she said, was a new business comprised of a network of women preparing dishes at home and marketing them to customers.
It’s an intriguing idea for any kind of authentic local cuisine — where home cooks can compete with corporate burger flippers, homemade food businesses often win. Meftahi and her team are bringing this competition to a part of the world that’s quickly modernizing — and enjoying the process.
“The best thing is that we create a whole community of startup and social companies which allows us to meet a lot of incubators and leaders who help us a lot,” Meftahi said. “I can say this open spirit and creativity is the best thing about my country.”
