Food & Beverage Reporter August 2018

DISRUPTORS
WAYNE’S WORLD
OF REAL FOOD NOW
Five years ago, Wayne Kaminsky started FitChef, a frozen meal
brand with a 21-day healthy eating challenge and a recurring order/
home delivery service that has been winning over a growing army of
consumers. Now he’s gone into retail as well, and FitChef’s mission
to put South Africans on a “real food” journey is riding a fresh wave
of success. Miriam Khan spoke to Kaminsky about the challenge of
being a “foodpreneur” in SA.
What got you interested in starting FitChef?
The reason FitChef exists is basically because I had to save
my own life. So, the idea behind FitChef came from saving
my own life with good food. I had to find an eating solution
that really worked. I was exercise-mad. I was doing things like
the Cape Epic, IronMan, 320km one-day rides, many stage
races and a stint of bodybuilding. I found that even though
I exercised a lot and burned more calories than 99% of the
population, I was still overweight. And I was pretty sick. In two
years, I had 14 courses of antibiotics.
The lights came on when I entered MasterChef and did
fanatical amounts of cooking trials, which included things
like cooking 45 versions of one meal in a night or cooking
70 meals on a weekend. But for the first time I had stacks of
home cooked meals in my freezer that I could just heat and
eat while running between meetings.
After three weeks of living on my own food, I lost the
additional weight and got off antibiotics for the first time in
two years.
My "Aha" moment had arrived and I realised that all diets
fail for one main reason: you don’t have good food available
now, so you eat refined, processed junk and derail your
health and weight goals. If you had good food available, you
would eat it. So we (Kaminsky’s two brothers joined him)
decided to sell good food in bulk. My vision from day one
was to be the world's leading real-food-solutions company.
To me, that meant we wouldn’t follow trends or fads and the
solutions we sold had to work! Public support was incredible,
people loved the 21-day challenge packages and weight loss
results were outstanding.
You certainly walk your own talk. What’s your daily
fitness and dietary regime?
I really do like a wide range of sports from cycling, running,
swimming, yoga, gym, MMA, jiu-jitsu and some rally motorbiking
lately. My focus at the moment is to be a bit more gentle on
myself as I am recovering from some injuries, and managing
FitChef is extremely busy.
I really believe exercise is a critical part of living a
performance lifestyle. It helps me manage emotions, stress and
it resets creativity. I am also into thinking out-of-the-box. So, I
listen to and read a lot of books, TED talks and loads of articles. I
question everything and test it out personally.
10 AUGUST 2018 | FOOD & BEVERAGE REPORTER www.fbreporter.co.za