Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Akua Atakora. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Akua, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think it takes to be successful?
Reaching success is a journey that looks different for everyone. Success is achieved by setting goals and accomplishing them. Success is about taking a leap of faith and stepping out of your comfort zone. Success is about who can make it to the finish line without quitting. The timing of everyone’s success story is different, so it’s important to not compare your journey to others. You can look at others for inspiration, but always keep in mind that everyone’s story is different. Based on my observations, I believe reaching success takes consistency, dedication, adapting to change, and a strong work ethic. Consistency and dedication are the first important traits to becoming successful. It’s about taking small steps each and every day, to reach your end goals. You have to wake up every morning, with a serious mindset about achieving your goals. You have to stay loyal to your brand, stay true to yourself, and give everything your best shot. Success is about keeping the same momentum, even on bad days. Quitting when things get hard, will only push you ten steps back. To truly become successful, you have to stay persistent, even on bad days. I read once, that if you ever feel like quitting, quit on a good day, not a bad day. We tend to forget that the good will eventually outweigh the bad, so we need to stay the course. The struggle and hardship we endure within a business, is just preparing us for the next level. Staying consistent/dedicated is key and will take you to the next level.
Adapting to change is the second important trait to becoming successful. Before you begin any new venture, always keep in mind that success comes with a lifestyle change. It comes with new habits, new daily routines, new obligations, and a new way of thinking. The journey to success can also be uncomfortable on some days. Each time we start something new, or have to go outside of our comfort zone, it can cause feelings of worry and panic. That’s because our mind and body have to adjust to the new change. Think about the first time you tried something new. At first, you were scared, but after mastering the skill you felt a lot more comfortable. Always remember that change can cause panic, anxiety, and feelings of worry, but this is completely normal. During this process, it’s important that you try and adapt to the changes as you go. You have to look past all the fears and “what if” scenarios you are feeling. The worry/panic we experience is all in our minds, but it’s not the reality of what will happen. When you feel fear creeping in, you have to redirect your mind and reaffirm positive thoughts like “I AM capable”, and “I CAN do this.” When we prevent ourselves from reaching our fullest potential because of fear, we are in our own way of becoming successful. You have to move past any fears and understand that the negative thoughts are not the reality of what will happen. You must be open and ready to adapt to change.
Having a strong work ethic is the third important trait to becoming successful. Having a strong work ethic will facilitate your growth, and keep you determined to reach all of your goals. Reaching success means that you can’t do the bare minimum. Since you are working for yourself, you have to go the extra mile and perform to the best of your ability. You need a good balance between work and rest to avoid burnout. You have to be extremely disciplined, because no one will do the work for you. You have to go above and beyond and keep yourself motivated even on days you don’t feel like it. You have to be your own teacher, mentor, student, and cheerleader at the same time. Take responsibility when things go wrong and learn from them, but don’t stay down for long. Forgive yourself. Always stay humble and understand that there is always something or someone you can learn from. You have to stay strong mentally and prepare for the many challenges that will take place. While there are more traits that can help you achieve success, these are just a few that can help you get started.
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 background and context?
Hi everyone! My name is Akua Atakora, and I am the founder of ChefKu Kuisines. I am a Private Chef/Caterer, Celebrity Chef, Catering Manager, Content Creator, Brand Influencer, and Food Blogger, based in Atlanta GA. I specialize in making a variety of foods including Appetizers, Seafood, Soul Food, Specialty Pastas, West African Food, and so much more! I am a renowned Chef and have cooked for many celebrities including Snoop Dogg, Jillisa Lynn, Yung Bleu, Marlon Wayans, and David Holston! Growing up, I always watched my mom in the kitchen as she prepared our meals. As I got older, I began to adapt some of the same culinary skills she would use while in the kitchen. During event days in college, I would cook food for my friends and family to enjoy. In November 2019, I felt my conscience telling me to start a cooking business. But I was so afraid because I had never started a business before. I constantly questioned myself. “Where was I going to get the equipment?” “How was I going to reach more customers?” “What if people didn’t buy the food?” In January 2020, I wrote in my diary/journal “Begin food business after graduation in May 2020”. Near the end of the 2020 school year, I signed up for over 15 webinars and did extensive research about how to start a business and become an entrepreneur. The webinars and research provided me with the foundation/tools I needed to get started. On May 23rd, 2020, I officially created an Instagram food page (@chefkukuisines) to showcase some of my top dishes. In June 2020, I officially began to take and fulfill customer orders. I started by selling weekly plates, which gave me some basic knowledge on cooking timing and how to fulfill individual orders. After a few months, I decided to begin a business transition and pivot. I realized that making weekly plates was becoming too difficult with my busy schedule. As a result, I transitioned fully to private catering for events instead of selling weekly plates. I started by catering for a few small events, including birthday parties, baby showers, and game nights. I fully completed my transition to private catering in March 2021, and It was truly the best decision I could have made for my business. As of today, I have catered for over 100 private events including Birthdays, Weddings, Graduations, Housewarmings, Networking Events, Baby Dedications, and more! The biggest thing that sets me apart from others, is the diverse food options that I offer on my menu. Since I grew up in a Ghanaian (West-African) household, I learned to cook African food at an early age and as I got older, I began to study and learn more diverse recipes. Customers can choose from menu options like Jollof Rice, Fufu, Lamb Chops, Mac & Cheese, or Seafood in the same order! My customers always tell me, about how much they love the variety of food options I offer. It’s truly a one stop shop! Since my catering transition, I have experienced some of the most amazing opportunities including being featured on a recent AT&T “Dream in Black Anthem” nationwide TV commercial. The “AT&T Dream in Black” commercial was filmed in New Jersey/New York, and my family and I were selected to be a part of the commercial. It was truly an experience of a lifetime, and without my business none of this would have been possible. I’ve also had the pleasure of cooking for several celebrities on special occasions including Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and Thanksgiving. My content on both my Instagram/Facebook accounts have also gone viral several times, which has put my current following at 43,200. I’ve also had the pleasure of collaborating with many different brands to promote their cooking utensils and help advertise different products. Since I started my business, I’ve been in rooms and spaces that I would have never imagined being in. I have also learned a lot about myself, and how to run a catering team. I am grateful for every loss, win, and moment of uncertainty, because it paved the way to get me where I am today.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Social Media is an amazing free tool to get connected to billions of people all across the world. People come on social media to network, share information, and for entertainment. Just a back story on my social media journey–in Nov 2021, some of my pictures started to go viral both on Instagram and Facebook. It started with one picture, and then, other pictures started to go viral as well. By March 2022, I had accumulated 10,000 followers. As of today (Oct 2022), I have accumulated 43,200 (43.2K) followers on my Instagram account. If you would have asked me this day last year where my following would be, I wouldn’t have imagined it reaching these numbers! My very first piece of advice regarding building your social media presence, is to not focus on your numbers too much in the beginning. I know this may sound strange, but you have to trust the process. If you focus on your numbers too much in the beginning, you will quickly become discouraged. You have to focus on posting your content and understand that the followers will eventually come. Again, you have to trust the process. Running a business account is very different from running a personal account. You have to convince people through a screen that your content is worth the follow, like, share or comment. If your page looks dull and uninteresting, chances are, people won’t follow you. Try and take yourself away from being the creator. If you were a stranger, seeing your content for the first time, would you engage with it? Building your social media audience takes patience, experience and time. When I first started out, I was getting just a few follows every week. I tried different methods, including Instagram AD’s but none of them were providing me with the results I needed. While other methods helped, my numbers weren’t increasing consistently. I was later able to build my audience from little to no followers, to thousands of followers. To build my social media audience, I followed a few strategies which include hashtags, engagement, post consistency and algorithm. While there are many other ways to build your social media audience, these are some things that helped me. Hashtags are an easy way to attract more followers to your page. Hashtags can help your content appear in several places at once. Hashtags can also help increase engagement, attract more followers, and help you reach your target audience . You should try and add hashtags to every post. Using hashtags helps your content spread to more locations and can also help people find you more easily. Best of all, using hashtags is completely free! A free way of getting you more potential clients and vendors that you can use for your business. Using hashtags will attract more potential clients to your page, and in turn, help you sell more products. Another thing I suggest is adding your brand name (#chefkukuisines) as one of the hashtags on your captions, so it can generate all of your posts to one location.
Engagement is also an important factor in building your social media audience. Social Media engagement is a measure of how many people are showing interactions with your social media content. Artists/creatives may comment/like/share your posts on social media. To engage, you should do the same. Pick different followers that may have the same or a similar niche, as you and try to engage with them. Engaging can be liking, sharing, re-posting or commenting on their content. Doing so will create a rhythm of other creators coming to do the same on your page. Not only are you engaging with their content, but you are also networking with others in the same industry. It’s also important to check your insights and content engagement at least 2-3 times a week, to get an idea of where your numbers are. Engagement numbers can go up or down, depending on the week so it’s important to keep an eye on your insights. Your content insights will provide you with any relevant stats/data you will need to gain more followers. When checking your insights, you should look at the first 3-6 posts. Then check to see which posts received the most engagement/views versus the least engagement/views. This will give you an idea of the type of content your followers like or relate to. You should continue to post content similar to the type of content that your followers engage with the most. For example, if you post a picture of pasta, and it receives extremely high engagement, you should try and post more content similar to pasta dishes.
Post consistency and algorithms are another important step in building your social media audience. A lot of people try to skip this step but it’s extremely important to not avoid it. Put simply. you have to stay consistent and post content regularly. Your followers and potential followers want to see new content. They want to see what you are up to, even after they have followed you. I know with busy schedules, and life, posting regularly can become difficult, but I would suggest posting at least three times a week at minimum. Try and take breaks in between, so your followers don’t become overwhelmed with your content. If you completely stop posting for a long period of time, your follower count will begin to decrease. Even if you have a picture or post that goes viral, you must continue to post as regularly scheduled. Do not stop posting, because the picture going viral will eventually slow down in numbers. You want to keep posting so that your other pictures can also have an opportunity to go viral and produce more engagement on your page as well. Post Algorithms are also key to increasing your social media followers. The algorithm dictates where your content is ranked, and when people will see your content while scrolling through their feeds. Everyone’s Instagram algorithm is slightly different due to the different time zones. Everyone has their own “peak times” where they will receive higher engagement versus at other times. Each time you make a post, you should focus on the times your post receives more views/likes versus times that your post doesn’t get as much engagement. Posting during your peak times, or high engagement periods will eventually increase your following. Instagram does an amazing job at breaking down all creator insights, so you can actually see the day of the week/time period that your posts receive the most engagement. Utilizing all of these tips will help increase your social media presence. You have to be extremely patient and understand that not every post will receive high engagement. Even if you worked very hard on a piece of content, and it receives little to no love, do not become discouraged. Continue to post as scheduled and trust the process.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
It’s important to note, that while running a business you will have to pivot at times. You will realize, that after writing a plan down, and executing the plan, you may have to make changes and that is completely okay. The first time I had to pivot, was in the beginning stages of my business journey. My initial plan was to only sell Ghanaian food, but I had to pivot slightly as a result of some observations. Just a backstory–I grew up in Toronto, Canada primarily with my mom, older brother Kofi, and older sister Ophelia. My mom deeply enforced the Ghanaian culture and tradition in our household throughout my childhood. Sometimes she would only speak the Ghanaian language to us, so we could understand it more. By the age 2, I was fluently speaking the Ghanaian language (Twi) and primarily eating Ghanaian food at home. My mom grew up in Ghana, where she learned to cook from her mother. She would help my grandma make African pastries and sell them at the market. After my family moved to Atlanta, Georgia, I realized shortly after, that there were no Ghanaian restaurants around. I would see other African restaurants, but little to no Ghanaian restaurants. The only restaurant that was selling Ghanaian food was over 45 minutes away in Norcross, and the only Ghanaian food shop closed down a few months after our move. Most of the African restaurants did not deliver to locations outside of their area either. So, once I started my business, I decided to primarily offer Ghanaian food on my menu. I felt since there were little to no Ghanaian food shops, I would only focus on serving these foods in the metro Atlanta area. I started by adding African foods to my plate menu, but they didn’t sell as much as I would have hoped. I also felt like, since I was African, people would request constant discounts and I was losing money. On the flip side, the few American dishes I would offer, I would receive a lot more sales, and people were paying in full with no hesitation. As a result, I decided that while I loved serving the Ghanaian dishes, I grew up eating, I wanted to equally add American foods to my menu as well. I’m extremely grateful I made this transition, because it helped challenge me more and also helped bring substantially more revenue to my company. I also began to receive a lot more engagement on my Instagram and Facebook page after my transition. Now customers can still purchase Ghanaian food, and American food in the same exact order! Making this pivot truly helped build my clientele and has facilitated the overall growth of my business.
The second time I had to pivot within my business journey, was going from selling plates to transitioning to private catering. As I explained earlier, I started my food business by selling weekly plates. I would post a menu each week and customers had a few days to pre-order. Selling weekly plates gave me some basic knowledge on cooking timing and how to effectively fulfill orders. However, after a few months, I realized that making weekly plates had become too difficult with my busy schedule. Overall, the time, money, and constant stress was not worth it anymore. I remember feeling so many feelings about transitioning to catering because I would always watch other caterers on Instagram and felt it would be extremely difficult for me to do. I was nervous about pivoting, but I went for it anyway. After catering for my first event in LaFollette, Tennessee, I learned so much about the do’s and don’ts of catering, and I realized that I was capable of making this transition. In March 2021, I fully completed my transition to catering, and It was truly the best decision I could have made for my business. Since I no longer sell plates, I decided to begin pop-up plate menus where I sell plates to customers from a special menu once every few months. This change has given me more balance and flexibility in my work and life schedule. There is absolutely nothing wrong with pivoting. When we start a new venture, we visualize how we may want things to be. But once we put things into action, it may change our perspective. Pivoting and change may be difficult, but they certainly help facilitate business growth.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/1/d/e/1FAIpQLSeRicP8ORPjSJE3flw-vDPe5NEcUpbhBh6Wh_lp0Vr2j2rHFw/viewform?usp=send_form
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chefkukuisines/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chefkukuisines
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@chefkukuisines
Image Credits
Auri Photography