From kitchen experiments to tallow business: Minnie Muthoni’s success story

For years, animal fat has been treated as waste in many slaughterhouses, with most people viewing it as an undesirable by-product with limited commercial value.

However, for Minnie Muthoni, what many consider waste has become the foundation of an emerging wellness business. Minnie is the founder of Smartcom Traders, a small enterprise specialising in underutilised livestock by-products, particularly tallow derived from beef and camel.

The entrepreneur ventured into commercial tallow production last year after experimenting with the fat at home and sharing it with friends and family. The positive feedback she received from her first users convinced her that there was a market for a product that had for years been overlooked.

“I started doing tallow in our own home and distributing it to the close people we have: our friends and family members. Out of the results we got, we now started doing it commercially,” she opens up.

Tallow is rendered animal fat, traditionally used in cooking and other household applications. Minnie says its commercial potential lies not only in its use as a cooking fat but also in its application in skincare and grooming products.

Her interest in tallow is partly rooted in her childhood experiences. She recalls watching her grandfather use animal fat in cooking and for skincare, practices she believes have been overlooked as consumers increasingly embraced industrial cooking oils and synthetic products. “When we were growing up, our grandparents used to use tallow in their cooking and in everything,” she reminisces.

Inspired by grandpa

Her grandfather’s practices later became an inspiration when she began looking for ways of improving her own lifestyle. Minnie says she had struggled with weight management and had repeatedly lost weight through various programmes only to regain it. She began researching nutrition and traditional cooking practices and became increasingly interested in tallow. Her research, she says, challenged some of the perceptions she had grown up with about animal fats. This prompted her to start experimenting with tallow before turning the idea into a business.

Smartcom Traders has been in existence for 14 years and initially dealt in other wellness products. It was only last year that Minnie identified tallow as the niche she wanted to pursue commercially.

She started small. “I began with less than Sh5,000,” she reveals.

With the money, she narrates that she bought a few kilogrammes of tallow. At the time, she did not even know how to identify the best raw material or distinguish the different types of livestock fat. Her first jar was sold to a friend, who later gave her positive feedback after using it. “That first customer became an important turning point.”

Today, Smartcom processes about 200kg of tallow a month, although Minnie says the business has not yet reached large-scale production. The enterprise operates its rendering activities under incubation by Somo Africa, which, she says, has helped the young business develop.

The Kiambu County-based company primarily uses dry rendering, a process in which animal fat is heated to extract the fat while reducing moisture. Minnie says removing moisture is important because it can encourage mold growth and compromise the quality and shelf life of the product.

Smartcom produces pure beef tallow for cooking, as well as infused varieties. “The infusions are made using ingredients such as rosemary, coriander, bay leaves, ginger and garlic, which add flavour and mask the strong aroma associated with beef fat,” she explains.

A kilogramme of pure beef tallow sells for Sh1,000, while camel tallow retails at Sh1,300. Infused beef tallow costs Sh1,200 per kg.

Minnie says the products are targeted at health-conscious consumers, families, sports enthusiasts and people seeking natural alternatives in their diets. The business also targets customers interested in natural skincare and grooming products.

Besides cooking, Smartcom uses tallow to make beard oils, hair oils and lip balms. She says the company has also developed gluten-free cookies and dog cracklings from the remaining rendered fat pieces, seeking to ensure little of the raw material goes to waste.

Content

Tallow contains fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, E and K, while its traditional use in skincare has also influenced some of Smartcom’s product development. For Minnie, however, the biggest opportunity is changing the perception of animal fat. Many consumers associate tallow with the old practice of buying loose animal fat from butcheries and rendering it at home.

At the same time, some consumers remain sceptical about its use because of widespread perceptions surrounding animal fats. This has made consumer education one of the biggest challenges facing her business.

Minnie has had to invest in product awareness to convince consumers that tallow can be processed, packaged and sold as a modern commercial product, a move that comes with costs and a lot of convincing. “It is not easy to persuade customers of a new product,” she states, as she shares the challenges she faces.

Her participation in this year’s Kenya Meat Expo provided an opportunity to cast the fishing net wide. The fifth edition of the Kenya Meat Expo, organised by Nation Media Group PLC, was held from August 26 to 28 at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre in Nairobi under the theme “Accelerating Sustainable Growth: Empowering the Next Generation in the Meat Value Chain.”

Minnie was among the exhibitors showcasing opportunities beyond conventional meat products. She says the event helped her reach consumers who were unfamiliar with camel tallow and its potential uses. “Not many people know that you can cook with camel tallow. People know of camel milk, but they never knew about camel tallow,” she says.

The expo also enabled her to demonstrate how an underutilised livestock by-product can be transformed into a packaged, value-added product. Officially opening the event, Agriculture and Livestock Development Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe emphasised the need for greater value addition and processing in the livestock sector. “Historically, too much value in our livestock economy has been captured through the sale of live animals or informal slaughter and trade. We must change this model. The future lies in moving progressively from live animals to carcasses, processed meat and branded products, and ultimately to premium markets,” CS Kagwe said.

Minnie attests to the potential of value addition in the livestock sector. Her business currently employs five people, up from a one-person operation when she started.

She believes the tallow value chain can create even more jobs as demand grows and slaughterhouses increasingly recognise animal fat as a valuable commodity rather than waste.

Minnie sources fat mainly from grass-fed livestock, particularly beef and camel. Her beef supplies come from areas such as Kajiado and the plains around Nanyuki, where grass-fed animals are available, she says.

Barriers

Despite the progress, accessing finance remains a major hurdle. Minnie says women entrepreneurs and small businesses often struggle to obtain working capital because lenders require collateral, which many do not have. Limited financial literacy and weak market linkages are other challenges.

The company is now eyeing regional and international markets. Although some customers in the US, including Oregon, have obtained its products, Minnie says these have not yet constituted formal large-scale exports.

Smartcom is exploring opportunities in the East African Community, including Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She says the business can currently handle an order of up to one tonne, equivalent to 1,000kg, when properly packaged.

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