When life served Chatsworth entrepreneur, Nash Munien a series of bitter setbacks, she decided to spice things up. Inspired by her grandmother’s cooking, she turned kitchen experiments into a quirky condiment venture with plenty of flavour, heart, and soul.
As she aims to achieve a few goals within a space of two years, Munien hopes that she can inspire readers through what she defines as her ‘educational wins’.
“Some people leave a corporate job and enjoy a well-deserved rest. I missed that memo,” she stated. After years of working across well-known corporate environments, hospitality, administration, healthcare, retail and au-pairing overseas, she finally decided that she had enough of working for others and registered her own company, purchasing a food trailer.
“One does not simply enter entrepreneurship without being thrown directly into the deep end, and due to this, I was scammed. The food trailer was meant to be my own office, to launch my gourmet loaded fries concept all over KZN. Unfortunately, the fries were not ready for me, so I changed direction,” she admitted.
She then found a premises and approached a local contractor to transform the space from a dress-making shop to a small commercial kitchen. “Needless to say, it didn’t work out. After already losing money, I eventually cancelled the lease and found myself back at square one – with considerably less money and considerably more experience and knowledge gained from the lessons I learned,” she added.
Munien stated that being the busybody she is, she needed something to keep her creative brain occupied. So, while the rest of the business plans were falling apart, she started making chilli curry condiments at home. Not because she thought she was going to make millions from a bottle of sauce. Quite simply, she needed something to do.
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“Job applications were being rejected, money was running out, and I felt lost and demotivated. I felt that this was going to be a failure, and then something happened! I started enjoying it,” she said with a smile.
One condiment became several. Recipes were tweaked. Flavours were tested. Spices were adjusted. Ingredients were measured, re-measured and probably interrogated by the ‘Mad Scientist’ she had become. The creative juices were flowing again. After financial losses, failed plans and emotional turmoil pushed Nash to her lowest point, she found reasons to keep going – including her beloved dog, Lola, whom she couldn’t bear to leave in anyone else’s care.
Nash Munien with her beloved grandmother, whose cooking inspired her flavourful condiment venture.
Rather than give up, she pivoted. And that’s when things started to get interesting. Instead of waiting for the perfect premises, commercial kitchen or business plan, Nash took her chilli curry condiments to markets across KwaZulu-Natal. What began as a way to keep herself occupied soon attracted customers and sparked a new business venture.
Enter Phreak Lab Co – a quirky flavour laboratory where Nash experiments with pineapple, apple and onion curries, with beetroot, roasted garlic, lemon, orange, mango, brinjal and carrot varieties in the pipeline. The inspiration behind her creations is deeply personal. She draws on memories of her grandmother, a formidable family matriarch whose legendary chilli curry was spicy, sour and bursting with character.
Taking those nostalgic flavours and giving them a modern twist, she has developed condiments that combine sweet, sour, spicy and savoury notes in unexpected ways. Her entrepreneurial journey has followed a similar recipe: a little spice, a few sour moments, some sweetness and plenty of unpredictability.
With no major investors, corporate safety net or family inheritance, she is building Phreak Lab Co one small batch at a time, selling her handmade condiments at markets.
But her ambitions stretch far beyond the condiment business. Over the next two years, she hopes to attend as many markets as possible, employ young, creative individuals, secure business premises, acquire a food trailer and establish Nathens Soup Kitchen, a non-profit named after her mother and brother.
For Nash, success is not simply about building a profitable business; it is about using what she has to make a difference in the lives of others. “My goal is not to be rich and famous. My goal is to use what I have to help others,” she shared. And her outlook on the setbacks she has endured? She refuses to see them as failures. “I see them as educational wins,” she concluded.
It is this mindset that continues to drive her forward – transforming disappointment into determination, family recipes into creative experiments and unexpected detours into new opportunities. She believes that life doesn’t always follow a recipe.
“Sometimes, you have to throw in a few unexpected ingredients, embrace the mess and create something extraordinary,” she chuckled. Nash is proving that even when life leaves a bitter aftertaste, there is always room to cook up something legendary.
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