Four years ago, Janine Honiball started growing herbs as a hobby.
Today her business, La Vie Herbs, employs 11 people and supplies more than 5.2 tons of herbs per year exclusively to Shoprite and Checkers.
Honiball, who lives just outside Kroonstad, struggled to find healthier and natural alternative seasoning, so in 2018 she started growing her own herbs on the farm where she lives with her husband.
Her love of herbs continued to grow and within two years, Honiball was supplying 14 types of herbs – including living herbs, salad onions, spinach and celery – to Shoprite and Checkers supermarkets.
La Vie Herbs’s employees – including seven previously unemployed local women – received agricultural training and education and are now so proficient that any newcomers are taught the tricks of the trade in-house.
“By supplying to the Shoprite Group my dream became a fully-fledged business, which has created much-needed employment for women in a community where jobs are scarce. It really is a privilege doing what I love while uplifting other women,” explains Honiball.
As drivers of growth and job creation, small businesses are crucial to the recovery of the South African economy and the group is capacitating and growing commercially-viable SMMEs through its Shoprite Next Capital business division.
“We want to enhance the participation of small suppliers in our business, particularly small female-owned businesses like La Vie Herbs by giving them access to our consumer market,” says Maude Modise, enterprise and supplier development general manager at Shoprite.
BUSINESS REPORT