Central SA
Botshabelo bakery crowned Free State champion─── ZENANDE MPAME 16:00 Tue, 30 Jul 2024
“The work we do is about more than creating food security but about meaningful employment for the youth of Botshabelo.”
A Botshabelo bakery has been crowned the 2024 IWISA No. 1 Community Champion in the Free State.
Bots Bakers owner, Emmanuel Mothae, received R30,000 at the recent award ceremony in Bloemfontein. Bots Bakers is a small-scale bakery specialising in bread, rolls, and buns. The bakery contributes to the community by enabling food security with its products, as well as empowering five young sales agents.
Mothae said the money will be used to provide ongoing support to the five youths currently employed by their small-scale bakery.
Bots Bakers specialise in bread, rolls, and buns. Picture supplied
“This is a blessing to us, we just want to thank God and Iwisa for the recognition. This is a boost to my morale, a boost to the business itself to realise that we are recognised.
“This goes to show that what we are doing changes people’s lives and that is why we exist we make a positive impact on other people,” he said.
“The biggest challenge that we’ve faced is capacity, we realised in the early months of our business that our capacity is not enough, we have equipment but the demand is always higher than our supply.”
These tricycles carry 100 loaves of bread. Picture supplied
The bakery tried to move away from using petrol as it only has one vehicle and they came up with tricycles that they use to deliver their products throughout Botshabelo.
The tricycles carry 100 loaves of bread, rolls, and buns each and they are driven by five young people. The drivers travel 10 km every day for the door-to-door delivery of the products.
“The work we do is about more than creating food security. It’s about meaningful employment for the youth of Botshabelo so they can have fulfilling jobs and futures.
“Bots Bakers exists to supply quality products at an affordable price and unfortunately affordable bread is not easily available and that’s where we come in as Bots Bakers.
“We supply the people with affordable products and we also bring these products to their doorstep.”
The bakery has been running for two years in Botshabelo and it has also ventured into Thaba Nchu and has plans in the future to come into Bloemfontein if their capacity increases.
