Business

The woman behind one of South Africa’s biggest food empires

Kirsten Minnaar • 31 December 2025

Ina Paarman went from teaching cooking classes in a garage to founding one of South Africa’s most well-known food-manufacturing businesses.

Today, Ina Paarman is a household name, with her products stocked by the country’s biggest retailers. However, the company had much more humble beginnings, with the Paarman family investing everything to found the small food business.

Paarman, a trained home economics teacher, rose through the ranks to become a senior lecturer at the Cape Technicon (today, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology).

However, she was so unhappy with her immediate boss that the stress started causing serious health problems.

So, in 1982, Paarman threw caution to the wind, leaving behind the security of her lecturing post to start a small cookery school in the family’s converted garage in Constantia, in Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs.

Even though she was knowledgeable in her field, it was difficult to get the business off the ground. This is because, at the time, people weren’t accustomed to paying to learn how to cook.

Paarman also had no advertising budget, which made it all the more difficult to get new students through the door.

So, her teenage sons were dispatched on their bicycles through the neighbourhood to drop homemade flyers into people’s post boxes.

Over time, the business slowly started to gain momentum, but the real catalyst came from a glowing review in the Cape Times. That one article breathed life into the cooking school, which subsequently became incredibly popular.

Paarman’s cooking classes were primarily attended by housewives, although the night classes were popular with men, especially doctors.

It wasn’t long before she realised that the business had outgrown her garage. Her students even insisted that she compile her notes to publish her first cookbook.

However, publishers were less interested in the idea. Instead of giving up, though, she and her late husband, Ted, took out a loan on their family home so she could self-publish her book, “Cook with Ina Paarman”, in 1987.

Self-funding the project also came with some constraints. She couldn’t afford glossy colour food photos, which are standard in cookbooks today. Instead, she had an artist create simple line drawings, which were published alongside the recipes.

Paarman went on to publish many more cookbooks, all while she was writing a regular column for a major newspaper and working as the food editor for a magazine.

A new business

While Paarman was running her cooking school, her youngest son, Graham, finished a business degree and was about to write his final chartered accountancy exam.

However, to his parents’ horror, he announced that it was not the career he wanted for himself. “Let’s go into business together,” Graham told his mother. “You can cook, and I can count. So, what is the problem?”

At the time, Paarman had been looking for another venture to keep her cooking school helpers employed during periods when there weren’t classes, which made the timing of the proposal perfect.

Graham suggested that they go into product manufacturing, and by 1990, they had opened a small factory startup where they hand-filled bottles with five staff members.

Right from the start, this was a Paarman family operation. Never the risk-taker, Ted made the uncharacteristically bold but brave decision to aid his wife and son in their start-up venture.

He invested his hard-earned retirement savings, which, along with the income from Paarman’s first self-published cookbook, provided the foundation for the new business venture.

The business didn’t have the most glamorous start. In fact, their first product, a flavoured sea salt, was mixed by hand in a metal bathtub. “I get chills thinking about how difficult it was,” Paarman told RSG Geldsake.

They had the challenging task of creating food on a large scale that doesn’t taste mass-produced. This made the production and testing process long and difficult.

For example, Paarman tested her chocolate cake mix 120 times before she was satisfied. She wanted the mix to be flop-proof, have a strong chocolate flavour, and stay moist three days after it was made.

Apart from ensuring that the products tasted good, the Ina Paarman business was also ahead of the curve in terms of health standards. Their products were made with no MSG or preservatives, long before that was the norm.

Paarman’s focus on gluten-free products, like the stock powders and sauces, was inspired by her son, Kevin, who had severe allergies as a child.

Years later, when health trends began to shift, and parents became more cautious about what their children were consuming, Ina Paarman was well-positioned.

A South African food empire

A major breakthrough for the company happened when Woolworths started selling its products. Today, Ina Paarman products can be found at all of South Africa’s biggest grocery stores, including Checkers and Pick n Pay.

Throughout the years, the business has continued to expand its product range. It now caters for everything from sauces and soups to baking mixes and salad dressings.

Now, 25 years after starting the business, Paarman is still involved. As the company’s managing director, Graham also retains control over the company.

“We are constantly improving our products,” Graham said. “We never want to become complacent and feel we’ve arrived.”

Paarman’s latest cookbook, My Favourite Recipes, was released in 2022. Dedicated to the men in her life, the book is an ode to her five-decades-spanning cooking career.