Tyl Giveback is supporting The Prince’s Trust, whose incredible work is helping one culinary creator get a taste for business brilliance.
The Prince’s Trust is one of the first good causes Tyl was able to help through our Giveback Community Fund. The trust’s life-changing work is something Tyl is proud to support. Here you can see how the trust’s initiatives are turning one food startup’s dreams into a delicious reality.
Farhana Ibrahim is a young entrepreneur behind Binta’s Kitchen, a Nigerian superfoods and sauces business. The 28-year-old from North London launched her company in 2020, and took part in The Prince’s Trust Enterprise programme to give her brand the best possible start.
“Binta is my mum’s name,” says Farhana, “and the sauces are my mum’s recipes, so the business is named after her. I sell online and through wholesalers, and we launched publicly during the pandemic in 2020.
“While I was studying for my Master’s degree at City University, I won a business competition called City Spark. It gave me the push to continue with my business idea, but I didn’t know where to start. I did the Enterprise course with The Prince’s Trust in 2019, and my mentor helped me plan for what I wanted to achieve. We met every so often to make sure I was hitting my milestones.”
Hungry to do well, but starved of inspiration
Farhana says that before the Enterprise programme, she was ready to learn and get started with her business, but she felt frustrated because she didn’t know what to do. She knew what she wanted to achieve, but the Enterprise programme was able to help her build the structure of her business, prioritise what to do first and what was most important.
“I needed to change my packaging, I needed to find places to sell my product – I had so much to do, and I didn’t know which was the most important, and what to do first. In the beginning, the mentor was so helpful with this. He wasn’t from the food industry, but he helped me make a plan. Later, I got a loan and a mentor from the food industry through a Start Up Loan which was great.
“My favourite part of the Enterprise course was learning about marketing with Loretta. It was really useful to learn how to talk about your brand story. I also loved meeting the other entrepreneurs, a lot of us are still in contact and we support each other.”
Getting the right support
Before she found The Prince’s Trust, Farhana was trying to learn about starting a business online. She says without the Enterprise course, she would have just continued to try that, but it would have taken longer. She was glad to find a streamlined course for free like the Enterprise programme.
For Farhana, a network of support is key to being successful in business. She has built a strong network in the food industry and is learning a lot from her contacts.
“I want to scale up my business and chat to supermarkets about getting my products in there. This stage has confusing elements but I’m chatting to lots of people and using every resource around me to get to the next step. Within the food industry, everyone is very supportive and shares advice and support.”
Farhana is looking forward to some upcoming pitch events with supermarket buyers, and through her contacts she’s also been able to find funding grants. She says, “You can’t learn from yourself; you have to ask for help. The network is essential and so supportive.”
A trust you can trust
Farhana would recommend the Enterprise course to other young entrepreneurs looking for help with setting up their business.
“You feel with The Prince’s Trust that you have a support system behind you. Even now I can contact The Trust and people are always willing to give their time. With business, you have setbacks all the time, so you need people behind you. The most important thing to me is the ongoing assistance that The Prince’s Trust can offer. That help and advice is invaluable.”
Want to know more about Giveback?
The Giveback Community Fund is at the heart of our business here at Tyl: with every card transaction our customers take, we donate a portion to the Giveback Community Fund, to support good causes. So, the more successful our Tyl customers are, the bigger the Tyl Giveback Community Fund grows, the bigger the impact we can have in our customers’ local communities – it’s a win-win-win situation. We hope to bring more and more charities into the Giveback fold as time goes on. Watch this space.
You can find out more about how Tyl Giveback is managed, in partnership with Pennies, and where the much needed funds are allocated here: