Kimeon’s Handmade Premium Ice Cream recorded strong sales at the recently ended Sanganai/Hlanganani/Dzimbahwe World Tourism Expo, with its indigenous fruit flavours attracting consumers and opening new business opportunities for the growing enterprise.
Director Kokerai Kimeon Vambire said the response at the tourism showcase demonstrated the commercial potential of transforming Zimbabwe’s indigenous fruits into innovative products.
The company produces ice cream from locally sourced fruits, including matamba, tsubvu, marula, shumha, nhunguru, mapfura and baobab, commonly known as mawuyu.
Vambire said the exposure at Sanganai went beyond sales, allowing the business to engage potential partners and customers interested in its products.
“We made big sales at Sanganai, and apart from the sales, we also created new business opportunities,” he said.
He said the idea behind the business traced back to his childhood in a remote area, where ice cream was considered a rare treat.
“Growing up, we were used to seeing our father going into town and bringing us ice cream. It was a once-in-a-lifetime delicacy,” Vambire said.
The experience later led him and his wife, Catherine, to explore how traditional fruits could be worked into ice cream, producing something familiar to local communities while offering consumers a different experience.
“We realised that we have our own fruits, our own local fruits. Then we said, why can’t we have a local fruit-flavoured ice cream?” he said.
Vambire said the business was also tapping into rising demand for locally produced, value-added foods. He noted that most of the indigenous fruits they use are naturally nutritious and rich in antioxidants, giving the company a way to pair traditional foods with modern processing methods.
The strong showing at Sanganai has encouraged the couple to pursue further opportunities to grow their market and build partnerships around their products.
Their participation also illustrated how tourism exhibitions can give small and emerging businesses a platform to test products, reach new consumers and forge commercial relationships.
Vambire said the company would keep developing products from locally available resources while backing Zimbabwe’s wider gastronomy and value-addition agenda.