As an entrepreneur, placing your name on each and every jar and container and package that leaves your home industry requires limitless trust and pride – in yourself, in your products, in the people who work for you and, in Elana Bruwer’s case, trust in the quality of the fruit that your husband and other farmers in the Breede River Valley cultivate.
But when you meet the pioneer behind Elana’s in the flesh one Friday morning, she doesn’t strike you as a brand but rather as something between a cheerful, hard-working farmer’s wife and a funky 21st-century home-industry tannie. Although the Western Cape remains the most important distribution area for Elana’s products, her preserves, jams, sauces, cordials, olives and pickled vegetables – all with a long shelf life – are now sold in shops in seven provinces.
She laughs when you say it seems Covid-19 did not have disastrous consequences for the business. “Well, Elana – that’s me! – lost her senses of taste and smell during the first wave of Covid, and I still don’t have them back. Although I’m aware of the basic sweet, salty, sour and bitter, I cannot taste anything. I can’t smell when something is burning. But yes, Covid was indeed good for the business!”
To her surprise, the enterprise grew so fast during
