Meet The Law Degree Holder Behind Lusaniya Food

Last week, we launched a search for the Lusaniya food slayer which was to begin from Rahim Restaurant Kampala opposite New Taxi park. Little did we know MAK law alumna Rimah Naiga was behind this trending restaurant.

A lawyer by profession who graduated with a bachelor of Laws degree from Makerere University in 2015, Naiga went to Rwanda for LDC and came back home earlier this year for job-hunting. After several unsuccessful attempts at getting employed, she unlike most of us, chose to settle and help out in her mother’s deteriorating business in April.

Campus Bee’s Jonah Kirabo and Derrick Mugabe sat her down for a little chit – chat about the inspiration behind the lusaniya and all the hype around it.

“Coming back from Rwanda after my LDC, I tried looking for jobs but then you know how low payments are, the long interview processes etc. I just decided to come and join my mom. She had already started the restaurant in 2004 but things failed to work out. We opened up this one in 2015. Realising my mom is old and doesn’t really have many ideas, I started looking for ideas to boost the sales.

Kept checking on the internet, researching what would boost the sales because I knew I had to make the money that I wanted. We decided to boost the restaurant on social media, marketing in different offices, giving out flyers until we started getting orders for outside catering,” Naiga narrates.

On a fateful day in April, Naiga’s friends asked if she could make them an ordinary Lusaniya dish to boost their eating morale. Behold the birth of Lusaniya as customer bandwagon sprung up on social media.

“This additional menu was one of a kind as no cent was spent for its advertisement. Whoever would come with buddies for the Lusaniya, took pics and posted on Facebook, shared on WhatsApp- would indirectly attract more customers to turn up the next day,” she reveals.

She adds on that the Lusaniya changed the the age groups that eat from their restaurant from ‘old’ people (30 years and above) to 20-(something)-year-olds as it’s always the youth that are willing to follow new eating trends.

Just like many other ideas face criticism, Naiga’s idea was first rejected by her mother who thought no one could spend over 15k on food with all the different cheap restaurants around town- and more so eating on a ‘local lusaniya.’

“We had the usual food pricing between UGX5k-6k. We still have it and I assured Mum that guys will come and eat including my friends as I marketed the idea. Surprisingly, the idea picked itself up faster than we thought and before we could realize people would come and eat Lusaniya at UGX50k or 65k.”

The idea was then pushed to another level as deliveries to different offices and shops were being ordered for on social media, through direct phone calls and bookings.

When asked about the ‘Lusaniya babe’ who recently trended on social media if it was her marketing strategy. She said this is one of their frequent customers and Rahim Foods had no hand in that even though many fanatics were calling it a PR stunt.

“No! That was just our customer, we also just saw it on social media. She came with a group of friends around four and ate the 45k lusaniya and I think she just took a picture and shared it with some people then it went viral”

On having to forfeit her profession (law) to earn a living

“I didn’t want to come and fix my self here since it wasn’t earning a lot but I have young siblings who had to be paid school fees for. Even when I was coming from home, I would just come to help out until my Lusaniya idea caught fire increasing customer turn up and sales.”