New Territory for Chef-Based Licensing

Recent deals for frozen and packaged foods have centered on chefs who hail from Africa, or have African roots, and are known for the African influences in their cooking and/or for promoting African flavors and recipes. Chefs of West African heritage have been particularly active.

Such celebrity chefs, recognized from their TV appearances, cookbooks, and/or restaurants, are sought-after as more food marketers look to the flavors of Africa as an untapped niche within the consumer frozen and prepared foods space, one that is starting to gain traction with mainstream food lovers. In most cases, both the chefs and their licensees are also looking to help diversify the offerings available in grocery stores.

Some examples:

• Zoe Adionyoh, known globally for her bestselling cookbook, Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen, as well as her restaurants, pop-ups, live events, and media appearances, paired with Ayo Foods, a specialist in frozen West African meals and hot sauces. Adionyoh’s frozen dishes, which launched in Sprouts Farmers Markets earlier this month, include adoboi (a stew made of bambara beans, red peppers, and chiles) and maafe (a peanut stew).

• Ghanaian-American chef Eric Adjepong, recognized from his roles on TV shows including Top Chef on Bravo and Money Hungry on Food Network, as well as his virtual cooking classes, retained Beanstalk as his licensing agent in a deal announced in August 2021. Adjepong also has a deal with Ayo Foods, for waakye (a dish of red peas and jasmine rice) and chicken yassa (a spicy marinated dish originating in Senegal). Adjepong also has deals with Clarkson Potter for cookbooks and Penguin Workshop for a children’s book about cooking in the African diaspora.

• Pierre Thiam, born and raised in Senegal and based in New York City, is an author, executive chef of two restaurants in Africa, and founder of the fine-casual Teranga, with two locations in New York. He founded a company called Yolélé, in partnership with Woodland Foods, that brings the ingredients of Africa to stores such as Whole Foods, Target, and Amazon, particularly the ancient grain fonio. He also has a signature dish within Mosaic’s line of frozen vegan entrées, namely ndambe, a Senegalese stew with okra, sweet plantains, and fonio.

• Marcus Samuelsson is an Ethiopian-born, Sweden-raised, U.S.-based chef who oversees 10 restaurants around the world. They include Red Rooster Kitchen, whose southern U.S.-inspired cuisine is available in the Harlem neighborhood of New York and the Overtown neighborhood of Miami. He is known for highlighting Nordic cooking, Black and Southern American cuisine, and global chefs, dishes, and ingredients, including those of his native Africa. He was a precursor to the current trend when, in 2017, he partnered with U.S. Foods to create a line of products for food-service operators across the country, meant to inspire them to integrate more global flavors. Dishes included Scandinavian and Southern U.S. examples, as well as an Addis-style spice blend, inspired by Ethiopian berbere. Samuelsson also had a line of Ambessa Tea with Harney & Sons (a collaborator of the Historic Royal Palaces, Emily Winfield Martin, and The Met), which launched in 2013. In addition to his restaurants, Samuelsson oversees an empire as a cookbook author, star of several television series, and featured presenter at live events.

A number of other chefs with roots in West Africa, or other parts of the continent, and known for promoting African flavors and dishes, have made a mark in the cookbook, restaurant, and TV worlds. That, combined with growing interest in as-yet-untapped African flavors in restaurants and grocery store aisles, means that we are likely to see more such deals pairing celebrity chefs from this region with frozen entrées and other food categories going forward.

We have been at Licensing Expo in Las Vegas this week and will be posting our coverage of the show in the coming days. In the meantime, we will not be publishing a new post this Monday (May 30, 2022), due to the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S. We’ll be back with our twice-weekly insights on licensing trends and happenings on Thursday, June 2.