Help bring Pelah Kitchen home

Hi friends,

My name is Jenneh Kaikai, owner and cake artist at Pelah Kitchen. Pelah means home in Mende, a nod to my Sierra-Leonean ancestry. We are a Black woman-owned micro-bakery specializing in botanical cake artistry. That means we create whimsical and imaginative designs using local and non-toxic flowers and produce.

On October 25th, we celebrated our 2nd anniversary, and what a ride it’s been. Since launching, Pelah Kitchen cakes have been featured in Vanity Fair Magazine, Cherry Bombe magazine, and you might have seen us in Google’s International Women’s Day Campaign in 2021. Last week, in front of almost 300 guests, we took home the “Most Innovative” prize at Hot Bread Kitchen’s PROOF Pitch Showcase.

These milestones are enormous, but I am about to embark on the most meaningful part of this journey. Next month, I’m bringing Pelah Kitchen home to West Africa – but I need your help to make it happen.

The first stop is Accra, Ghana, where I’ll share pastries and my business journey with almost 200 phenomenal women of color at an event.

The next phase of the trip is geared toward Pelah Kitchen’s growth. One of my business goals has always been to connect Pelah more explicitly to Sierra Leone, where most of my extended family still lives. I’m a coffee enthusiast, so when I learned that Sierra Leone has been producing and exporting coffee since the 1800s and that coffee was a main cash crop between the 1970s and 1980s, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for expansion. Working directly with farmers, producers and established coffee experts on the ground, I will import beans from Sierra Leone and roast them here in Brooklyn. Bringing what so many love about Pelah’s unique flavor complexity and sense of comfort to your homes and favorite cafes.

I am seeking funds to help with expenses and costs associated with this initial trip: airfare, branding/marketing materials, transportation to the coffee farms on the ground, and payment to local partners. My priority is to build direct, honest and transparent relationships within these partnerships, and compensating them for their time and effort is crucial.

Pelah has achieved more than I ever could have imagined in just two years, and none of that would’ve been possible without the outpouring of community support I have humbly received. As we begin this new phase of our business, I couldn’t be more excited to bring you all, my neighbors and friends, along on this journey.

Thank you deeply for your encouragement and contribution.

Love,

Jenneh