At a time when ₦10 could make the difference between going home empty-handed and returning with something to give his family, a teenage, Saheeto Kekere-Eku took a weekend job as a party waiter on Lagos Island. Still a student at St. Gregory’s College, he had little money, no business capital and no clear idea that the seemingly modest decision to work weekends would eventually shape his life. Today, Saheeto is widely recognised as one of the pioneers who transformed small chops from a relatively unfamiliar offering into a defining feature of Nigerian celebrations and a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem.
But his story is much bigger than spring rolls, samosas and puff-puff. It is a story about recognising opportunity before capital, turning rejection into access, learning from the bottom, building through relationships and creating an institution that has provided livelihoods and training opportunities for thousands of people.
Speaking on The Builders, Saheeto takes listeners back to Lagos Island, where his entrepreneurial journey began almost accidentally. As a teenager, he noticed a schoolmate carrying what seemed to him like an extraordinary amount of money. Curious, he discovered that the boy earned ₦10 a day working as a waiter at events. Saheeto immediately wanted in. He arrived early at his first assignment, only to discover that the available positions had already been taken. Rather than walk away, he waited, and his persistence eventually earned him a place as an extra waiter.
That first weekend changed the direction of his life. He worked long hours, sometimes returning home in the early hours of the morning, and began earning tips in addition to his wages. More importantly, his diligence caught the attention of people around him. He became a preferred member of the waiting team and started receiving more opportunities.
But the most important break in his early career came when he was forced to take what appeared to be a step backwards. After finishing secondary school, Saheeto applied for a waiting job at a restaurant. With hundreds of applicants competing for the position, he was considered too young to work as a waiter. Instead, he was offered a role in the kitchen washing plates. He accepted.
That decision would prove transformative. Working in the kitchen exposed him to food preparation, production processes and Chinese cuisine. He began learning how items such as spring rolls and other foods were prepared. What looked like a demotion gave him knowledge that would later become the foundation of his business. Saheeto describes that period as an unexpected form of business education: the kitchen gave him knowledge, exposure and capacity.
The breakthrough came at a wedding in Lagos, where he was asked to lead a team of waiters. At the time, the menu for such events typically featured familiar snacks such as puff-puff and masa. Drawing from what he had learnt in the kitchen, Saheeto suggested adding spring rolls, samosas and chicken kebab. The response was immediate, and what started as an idea for one wedding gradually became a business.
His first customers came largely through referrals. Without advertising budgets, sophisticated equipment or startup funding, Saheeto relied on the quality of his work and the relationships he built. Customers recommended him to other customers, and the network grew. At one point, a client advised the young entrepreneur to stop spending money trying to look successful and instead invest in equipment. He listened, choosing to buy the tools needed to build the business rather than spend money creating an image of success.
Friends, clients and family members also supported him along the way. Eventually, the catering opportunities became difficult to combine with his restaurant job, and Saheeto made the decision to resign and commit fully to entrepreneurship. He was barely 18 or 19. There was no significant startup capital waiting for him. There was simply an opportunity, a willingness to work and a growing reputation.
That philosophy remains central to his message today. “Opportunity comes before money,” is one of the strongest lessons running through Saheeto’s story. He challenges the widespread belief that capital must always be the first requirement for starting a business. For him, the first question is not necessarily “Where is the money?” but “What opportunity can I identify, and what can I do with it?”
His own journey provides the evidence. He started by working for someone else, learnt a skill, identified a gap, used relationships to access customers, reinvested in equipment, built a team and expanded through referrals. Eventually, he turned a simple food offering into a recognisable business category.
The impact extended far beyond his own company. Over the years, Saheeto says he has trained and mentored thousands of people who have gone on to establish their own businesses and employ others. Some who started under him eventually became competitors, yet he does not regard that as a threat. Instead, he sees it as multiplication.
His philosophy is simple: one person can only serve so many customers, but if you train ten people and those ten train others, the impact becomes much larger than one business. For Saheeto, business is not simply about personal wealth. It is about creating opportunities, engaging young people and building institutions capable of generating livelihoods.
His journey has also taken small chops beyond Nigeria. He recounts catering engagements across the United States, Mexico, Mauritius, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Spain, London and other locations, demonstrating how a concept rooted in Lagos could travel across borders. Yet despite the international opportunities, Saheeto remains deeply committed to Nigeria and particularly to Lagos Island, where his story began.
He sees the growth of small chops as part of a broader Nigerian entrepreneurial story: ordinary ideas, when developed with discipline, quality and consistency, can become significant businesses. His own customers provide perhaps the strongest evidence of that philosophy.
Some have remained with him for decades. He recalls serving families across generations, including clients whose weddings he catered for and whose children’s weddings he later handled. He attributes that loyalty to three things: relationships, consistency and quality.
For Saheeto, customer relationships are not transactional. He believes entrepreneurs must respect their customers, remain humble and continually deliver on their promises. In an increasingly competitive market, businesses need a distinct signature that makes customers recognise their product without being told who made it. That signature is what he believes has distinguished Saheeto from the many businesses that have emerged in the small-chops space.
But his journey has not been without painful setbacks. One of his earliest major catering assignments involved preparing food for about 2,000 people. After days of preparation, a freezer containing much of the food was switched off and cleaned shortly before the event. The food spoiled, forcing him to start over and reproduce in a fraction of the original time what had taken days to prepare.
Years later, he faced an even bigger setback when a major catering contract worth about $450,000 collapsed following operational failures during a nationwide campaign assignment. For an entrepreneur who had built his business painstakingly from almost nothing, the loss was devastating. But he rebuilt.
That resilience is another defining feature of his philosophy. Saheeto does not romanticise entrepreneurship. He acknowledges the pressure, mistakes, staff challenges, infrastructure problems, electricity costs and operational failures that come with running a business in Nigeria. His answer is not perfection but continuous improvement.
He advocates understanding a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, reviewing results and changing strategy when something is not working. The same mindset is now driving his next chapter.
Saheeto is working to move small chops beyond traditional event catering and into a more accessible quick-service restaurant model through Saheeto Signature, where customers can walk in and order small chops without waiting for a wedding, birthday or corporate event.
His ambition is even larger: to build a global franchise, taking the concept into more African markets, the United Kingdom, the United States and beyond. The goal is no longer simply to cater parties. It is to build a global Nigerian food brand.
And perhaps that is what makes Saheeto Kekere-Eku’s story so compelling. The man who once earned ₦10 for a day’s work as a teenage waiter now speaks about franchising a Nigerian food concept internationally. The young man who was considered too young to serve customers became a kitchen worker, learnt processes others overlooked and eventually used that knowledge to create an entirely new commercial opportunity.
His journey is a powerful reminder that entrepreneurship rarely begins with a grand plan. Sometimes it begins with ₦10, a white shirt, a black pair of trousers and the determination to show up. Sometimes rejection is simply redirection. Sometimes a step backwards is actually the door to the knowledge you need to move forward.
And sometimes the opportunity that changes an industry begins with one person willing to see possibilities where everyone else sees an ordinary product.
For Saheeto, the journey is far from over. “I’m still growing,” he says.
From the little room on Lagos Island where customers once had to navigate difficult conditions to patronise him, to catering thousands of people and taking small chops across international borders, Saheeto Kekere-Eku has built more than a catering business. He has built a legacy of enterprise, mentorship, resilience and opportunity.
And his next ambition is clear: to turn a Nigerian small-chops idea into a global franchise.
