Kumin & Khords allows Tyron Kyle Adams to combine his passion for food and music. Based in Wellington, he and his team have been offering at-home catering and takeaways since May this year. Whether it’s pasta and burgers, spit braais, or restaurant-quality fine-dining cuisine.
Tyron studied hospitality and food and wine before working as a breakfast chef in a hotel and working his way up to becoming a junior sous chef. Sadly, he was retrenched at the beginning of the pandemic. He then landed a job as a head chef at a wine farm, but still struggled financially. At a point he even considered leaving the industry, but his love for cooking continued to keep him going and instead, Kumin & Khords was born.
“‘Kumin’ is my favourite spice, so I decided to go with it as a means of describing the food and hospitality within our business, whereas ‘Khords’ speaks to the entertainment and, more specifically, the music side of our business.”
“The reason we started this company was to target staff canteens at factories, which have continued to operate since the first hard-level lockdown – the essential workers,” Tyron reveals. Tyron is joined by Chef Ishmian Samuels, whom he mentored at the start of his career, and his cousin Lindley Hendricks.
Lindley doesn’t have any restaurant background and is a cricket player, but he primarily has the role of marketing – although it seems he is multitalented.
Despite his background working in restaurants, Tyron says he is most inspired by home cooking. This philosophy is what led to their winning dish in the McCain Dishruption Challenge. As part of their competition entry, Kumin & Khords ran a McCain-inspired menu for a week and entered three dishes into the Dishruption Challenge. But it was their sweet and sour McCain stir-fry made with pulled pork and topped with a pickled ginger, apple and fennel salsa that won the day.
And how will the prize allow them to achieve their vision? “We are planning to invest 90% of our cash prize into buying equipment, which in return allows us to push more sales and assist us with doing bigger functions,” Tyron reveals.
“This will also help us with providing jobs to other chefs in our community. The other 10% will be used as capital to help start our social impact programme.”
