He does not literarily do any cooking in Mr Grillz’s kitchen but Ogunsanwo is more at home cooking with raw data.
From financial analyst to data chef, JIDE OGUNSANWO tells FUNKE OSAE-BROWN the story of Mr. Grillz, in this interview.
We agreed to meet at his office off Toyin Street Ikeja. The cloudy weather would not deter me. As I walked up the staircase to his office, it had started drizzling. I knocked quietly on the door. His familiar voice came through, ‘who is there?’ he says as he opens the door. ‘You are Funke, right? He asks as he ushers me into his office.
As he settles down into the chair behind his desk I sat on a seat across the table facing him. I tried to take in everything in his modestly furnished office. Different books are neatly arranged in one corner on the table, his laptop before him. He excused himself to quickly attend to an email he was sending. Behind him is a collage of pictures of dishes of all kinds. Before long, he was done sending the mail. And our chat began in earnest.
Ogunsanwo is not in any way different from the guy I saw on Channels TV a few month ago analysing the outcome of the last presidential election. An email I received announcing his latest move into fast food got me interested in this financial analyst turned chef. His newly opened, fast food outlet, Mr Grillz is located on the popular Allen Avenue, Ikeja.
The idea for Mr Grillz came up while he was gathering data on Nigerian’s food consumption habits where he discovered that Nigerians don’t always get value for money when it comes to food.
“Mr Grillz was founded because we have noticed a major gap in food,” he tells me. “There is no place that is very, very good when it comes to taste. We also set the company up because we identified that when you think barbeque in Nigeria, there isn’t that good location that you can walk or drive to when you want a good barbeque there are so many locations that you can go to when you are thinking of eba, amala or even shawarma or when you wanted noodles.”
He says Mr Grillz sets out to change that perception. “Mr Grillz was set up to offer exceptionally good taste to Nigerians. If you want to eat something you don’t eat every day, you want to ensure that whenever you eat it, it tastes really, really good.”
Ogunsanwo proudly calls himself a data chef. Most people know him as Nigeria’s foremost political data analyst. His knowledge of data analysis has helped him breakdown the need of Nigerians when it comes to food. Armed with this rare knowledge, he was confident to go into fast food business. He does not literarily do any cooking in Mr Grillz’s kitchen but Ogunsanwo is more at home cooking with raw data.
“Over the years,” he says, “I realised that I am the person that keeps analysing those figures and pointing out where the opportunities are in the Nigerian economy. I use my experience with the wealth of studies I have done regarding the Nigerian economy and the opportunities.”
Ogunsanwo brings a new experience to grilling
According to him, there is a study that shows that Nigerians spend most of their money on food. “As at 2010 The National Bureau of Statistics came out with a report. Not so many people are carefully studying the report released by National Bureau of Statistics. The report stated that 67% of Nigerians spend most of their income on food.”
After his discovery, Ogunsanwo probes the report further to know what kind of food Nigerians spend the most on. “I decided to look at not just what we spend so much money on but on what type of food are we spending money on. We spend money on items like bread, chicken and fish. So this goes well with my long term plan to offer food that is fully prepared in a hygienic environment. A food that tastes exceptionally well. Nigerians love chicken, Nigerians do love bread, Nigerians do love fish. Hence I have set up a company to offer bread as shawarma, chicken as barbeque and fish as grill fish.”
Ogunsanwo says it took him three years to come up with the exceptional flavours for his dishes. “To make us exceptionally different, we spent a lot of time to come up with flavours and taste that are unique to Mr. Grillz. Whenever you eat a barbeque chicken or a grilled fish or indeed our Warmajama shawarma which is our trademark for our shawarma; whenever you try any of these three meals on our menu, you will get a taste that you won’t have gotten anywhere else. The taste has been designed to make you feel good. And once you feel good it makes you understand that you are getting value for your money.”
Mr Grillz offers bespoke barbeque chicken, grilled fish, specially homemade Shawarma among other tasty dishes. Some of his unique spices are sourced from Jamaica.
Some of the meals we offer include: chicken barbecue, and grilled fish. We have a sweet Jamaican meal which is our signature for chicken which are flavoured with species from Jamaica. We also use some African species. It is named Sweet Jamaican Chicken because there are sweet secret recipes from Jamaica once you eat it, gives you that taste even though you have not been Jamaica.
“At Mr Grillz, you can get that appropriate Jamaican grill taste in your mouth, get that African taste in your sense. It all makes you feel good that what we are about. The chicken our signature is the sweet Jamaican. For the shawarma, we understand that there are lots of companies that do some measure of tasty shawarma. What we done with our shawarma meal is that we have a signature we call Warmajama shawarma. From the name Warmajama it means the shawarma menu is fully loaded. It has variety of vegetables. You have a choice of either chicken or beef. It is our trade mark that allows you enjoy up to the last bite. The Warmajama is a signature to shawarma. For fish, we don’t want to take the shine off the fish, so we have no special name just want the fish to be our main attraction.”
*Mr Grillz is located close to Etisalat office on Allen Avenue, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria