Make It Grain

For Twila Cannell, owner of The Grainery – a Johannesburg-based company that sells ethically sourced wholegrains and flours – a side hustle has become a way of life that’s fuelled by passion and good carbs.

- Roberta Thatcher

“Two years ago, I was working for an online store, pulling long hours, living unhealthily and just generally struggling,” Twila remembers. “I realised I needed to change my life.” The first step in her – and partner, Jason Bailey’s – healthy lifestyle change was to improve their diet. “We were watching loads of MasterChef at the time, and Yotam Ottolenghi made a guest appearance for a week during which he championed vegetables and whole grains,” Twila says.

The couple were eager to try out this new way of eating, but they soon found that good-quality, healthy grains were hard to come by. “We had just bought a house and had to furnish it, so there was no way we were going to spend R90 on quinoa,” Twila laughs.

This personal conundrum happened to coincide with Twila’s desire to start her own company. “I was walking through Zoo Lake one day – thinking of different business ideas – and the idea for The Grainery came to me, name and all,” she smiles.

Like so many new business ideas, the initial concept was very different from what The Grainery is today. “I wanted to offer a healthy lunch club to office parks in and around the Rosebank area,” Twila explains.

As such, she came up with the idea to make wholesome bowl lunches – “Bowls were all the rage back then, in the beginning of 2018,” Twila adds – and it was during one of the recipe brainstorm sessions that the idea came up to sell the grains themselves, too.

For Twila, sourcing the best possible suppliers was key. “Finding suppliers involved a lot of research, as traceability was crucial for me,” she says. “The grains also needed to be of the highest quality and a reasonable price, and I had to be confident that the suppliers had sustainability and Fair Trade policies in place.”