We were lucky to catch up with Gabi Odebode recently and have shared our conversation below.

Gabi, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I believe in inclusivity and representation. This how my mission started regarding the business that I co-founded. I realized at some point that African food specifically West African food was not represented in the main stream food industry compared to other cultural dishes. For this reason I made it my mission to get African food outside my community. I wanted to introduce people to African food. For this reason I started teaching different cooking classes in different areas in Ohio where I introduced people to certain African (West) cuisines.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Chef Gabi Odebode was born and raised in Koforidua Ghana, West Africa. She started her early education in Ghana and immigrated to America at the age of 9.

Upon moving to the United States Maryland, Chef Gabi started fifth grade. In high school, she registered for food and nutrition and international cuisine class. There, she watched several cooking shows by a woman named Rachael Ray who coined the concept of 30 minutes meals. The food and nutrition class sparked her interest. She started to cook more often at home and experiment with spices and herbs and learn to cook other meals aside from her cultural cuisines.

Chef Gabi climbed the educational ladder and graduated with a master’s degree in biology. During her master’s program, she started her side hustle which was catering. She later developed her first product known as puff-puff mix (Beignet Mix) which is used to make puff puff (a popular African donut). It was the beginning of her business which is now known as Afromeals.

Afromeals started in Baltimore Maryland where Chef Gabi started catering to her community and selling her puff-puff mix product. She later moved with her family to the Dayton/Cincinnati area. Upon arriving in Ohio she realized that African food was underrepresented in her area. For this reason, she decided to start looking for ways to introduce and educate people in the Cincinnati/Dayton area about her cultural food. Once again, she started with puff puff mix and then started teaching in various cooking schools stretching from Cincinnati to Dayton. Chef Gabi started teaching people how to make certain African and Caribbean cuisine in the cooking schools and it was a hit. She wanted to give people a cultural experience through their taste buds. When teaching she shares ingredients, recipes, and storytelling about her culture and the other of other African countries.

Chef Gabi moved to her location in downtown Cincinnati where she started her cooking school, catering, and meal prep business. She continued to teach people how to cook different foods from different parts of Africa and the Caribbean.

During covid shutdown chef Gabi found ways to bring this cultural experience to people online as well. She started teaching clients from fortune 500 companies such as Proctor and Gamble, Danone, and other local organizations and companies how to cook African and Caribbean food online.

Chef Gabi’s popularity has grown in Ohio as she is known as the Chef exposing and educating people about African and Caribbean cuisine. Notable features are Cincinnati Magazine, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, Face2Face Africa, and various newspapers, and magazine publications locally, nationally, and internationally.

One of her proudest moment was, Food Network reaching out to her. They brought her on to develop West African recipes for them. This was such a great moment for Gabi because Food Network is such a great platform for a variety of people to be exposed to African food. This helping her towards accomplishing her mission to get the mass to experience African cuisine.

Currently, Chef Gabi is known as one of the pioneers in the Cincinnati/Dayton area in Ohio introducing people to African cuisine and culture. This is how she coined her business tagline “Experience the Culture”.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Growing up in an African home. You grow up cooking along with your mom, aunt or grandma. I started learning how to cook at a young age. it wasn’t until I high school that I took interest in experimenting with different ingredients. At this stage, I never thought I would be doing what I am doing right now being a chef. While in high school I was studying biology, chemistry, pre-calculus. All these prerequisites that would get me into college and help me to get in to medical school. I remember being in college in my dorm rooming cooking for my roommates and also those in my dormitory. I loved it but never did I think about switching a white doctor coat for a white chef jacket. After graduating from college I pursued a Masters degree in science. While working on my masters and working in a neuroscience lab, I catered as a side hustle. Still I never considered becoming a chef. From my masters program I taught some biology classes and then went off to work in a hospital as a clinical researcher. This was for a short time. I later moved to Ohio with my family and I realized that I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing. I didn’t love being in the hospital. I realized how happy I am when I cook and feed people. For that reason, I decided to pursue catering, and finding ways to introduce people to my delicious food. I realized my first recipe book on Amazon, started creating products and started teaching people how to cook. The rest is history.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Moving to Ohio where my family and I did not know anyone in the area. We had to build from ground up. Starting a business from ground up in a new location with babies was not easy. My Co-founder and I kept pushing, brainstorming, educating ourselves and studying our environment to see how we can penetrate our new environment with our services. We also had to understand how to use social media to help us grow our business. We had many challenges. One being finding a location to produce products, cater and teach cooking class. Though it was hard, it took about a year and half before we could find a commercial kitchen to work out off. While we were waiting on the commercial kitchen, we didn’t stop working. We found ways to run the business and bring notoriety to the business. When we found the kitchen, it was around the time of Covid-19 which caused us not to function for almost all of 2020. We found ways to work though that as well by offering online classes. We never stopped or gave up we always found a way or pivot to develop another aspect of the business whenever we hit a road block.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.afromeals.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afromeals/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/afromealsLLC
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?heroEntityKey=urn%3Ali%3Aorganization%3A71805672&keywords=afromeals&origin=RICH_QUERY_SUGGESTION&position=1&searchId=41a79dad-290a-4d34-883b-44f6b4fc2da9&sid=IpO
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLX1YZkp-4jOFyMMJT6SFmA

Image Credits
I have rights to the pictures. Credit My daughter Joy O.