Passion is one of the key ingredients to building any successful business and brand. And, in the world of artisan chocolate making, it is one of the Savanna Premium Chocolate brand’s strongest assets, thanks to founders Chiinga Musonda and Lynn Musonda Phiri.
Chiinga has previously worked in banking with JP Morgan Chase and UBS in NYC. Most recently, she worked with the scientific publisher / information services provider Elsevier in The Netherlands. She also has an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BA in Economics and in Computer Science from Smith College in the USA.
Lynn, the second half of the company, previously worked for the Zambia Telecommunications company. She is currently pursuing an MBA in International Business and has a BA with honors in Business Studies with Marketing from University of Greenwich.
These two sisters have a tracked record of different previous work settings, but nothing beats the passion which drove them to produce chocolates. The pleasure they derived from eating chocolates right from childhood and also the joy on the faces of loved ones when gifted chocolates were enough to fuel their passion and kickstart the journey.
Today, we have Savanna Chocolates because two sisters in love with chocolates decided to recreate the standard in Zambia.
As expected from an Indigenous manufacturing company, the duo absolutely love the support they are getting from the Zambian community. Chiinga and Lynn learned pretty quickly that this is not about them manufacturing chocolate in their beloved country, Zambia but that they are building a Zambian brand and the people want to engage with the brand in help to make it the best it can be.
The invaluable feedback received from their community has helped them improve in packaging designs and even in the chocolate flavors.
The excitement they get when their customers purchase their products and then share their feedback on social media cannot be contained as these positive feedback in turn motivates them to keep improving their products.
They take pride in the fact that their chocolates are made from carefully selected single origin cocoa beans to preserve the flavors of the country of origin. They are constantly improving on their chocolate making process to ensure that consumers get premium quality chocolates.
What makes their chocolates different from others is that they sell handcrafted chocolates and chocolate products that are made from natural ingredients with no artificial flavors, no artificial colors, and no preservatives.
“Start before you are ready”. If you have a business idea, don’t wait until you feel you are ready. Just start and with every step that you make, it will become clear what you need to do and you will learn what needs to be done. The product or service may not be perfect in the beginning but you can keep improving as you build. By starting you will get invaluable feedback that you need to grow or make adjustments to your idea. The more momentum you build the more you will see your dream become reality,” are their final words to women who have a business idea they’re afraid to launch.
