At the heart of African Soul Food is a story of family, passion, and the desire to fill a void. We are Caroline and Tracy Gonga, the mother-daughter duo behind this restaurant. Our journey began with a simple realization from Caroline, who has lived in the US for over 20 years. She saw that there was nowhere people would go and find Kenyan food.
Already passionate about cooking, Caroline would often bring trays of her food to events, and people loved the food. This sparked a feeling that she needed to do more in that area.
It was a big leap. As Caroline said, it was big shoes for her to get to step into because she never did a restaurant before. But she drew on her experience from catering for so many people and her time working in the hotel industry’s restaurant department. She and Tracy decided to dive in with both feet.
It was a true labor of love. It took us 6 months to renovate, and we finally started off in May of last year. Today, we run this restaurant full-time, together. Both of us are full-time here, running it as a hands-on team. Tracy is more in the front end, greeting our guests, while Caroline is more in the back end. She deals with the billing, the paperwork, and works with the government.
We call ourselves African Soul Food for a reason: we cook for the soul. Our very first ingredient is love. We want to remind you of the taste of home and create a place where you fall in love with our African dishes. We are so blessed to have a very big customer retention, and we truly believe there’s no way you’re coming here once that you’re not going to come back again.
It hasn’t all been easy. One of our main challenges is finding employees. We are blessed to have most of our employees be students, but they work on a school schedule, which has been quite challenging. The US is also very strict on making sure everything is par order. They come every 6 months to check on our sanitation and food temperatures. But this just keeps us on our toes to provide the best service.
We learned quickly that to succeed, we had to delegate. We have an accountant who deals with all our taxes and someone in marketing who handles our social media. This allows us to be present and focus on what matters most: our food and our guests. We’ve seamlessly merged our expertise to build this dream, and we are so honored to share it with you.