Our Story
Based in Luton, Bedfordshire, OmoakinUK is a small family-owned business of a husband (Emmy) who loves to create masterpieces in the kitchen and a wife (AY) who just wants to get cooking over with as soon as possible. Our spice blends use high quality ingredients, are designed to be all-purpose and give consistently great results every time.
Emmy: I was born and raised in Northern Nigeria (Zaria, Kaduna and Sokoto) by clergy parents who have lived their lives serving people. At an early age, my siblings and I knew how very important it was to offer food and drink to anyone who came to the house to visit. Mum would say, the least you can offer is a glass of water, but we knew she'd go beyond that and do the most! We didn't enjoy it at first cause we had to do the serving and clean up after, but we doubled our hustle as kids when we realised we started getting money from visitors just as they were about to leave, oh what sweet memories! - We had our favourite visitors who we fought to always attend to and unfortunately we also had the ones who......never mind lol (forgive us, we were kids!)
Growing up, my brother and I were raised not to believe that cooking and household chores were for girls or women alone and because we saw our dad cook and take care of us when our mum was away studying at University. Having spent so much time in the kitchen with my mum, waking us early so early to assist her, seeing her put her magic into mixing spices, cooking, baking, serving, and selling some of these amazing food, (zobo, kunu, doughnuts, puff puff, suya spice, pepper soup spice etc), you now see why I am such a foodie.
AY: I grew up in Southern Nigeria - Lagos specifically. As a child, I used to hide from my mother whenever she was in the kitchen cooking. More often than not, you could find me with my nose in a book, exploring distant lands in my imagination while my brother kept our mother company in the kitchen. Even though I eventually learned how to cook (mum finally put her foot down in my teenage years!), I much prefer the path of maximum results from minimal time and effort when it comes to cooking. This became even more important for me after becoming a mother myself. Juggling marriage, motherhood, work (and myself!) leaves very little time to spend hours over a hot stove!
Our journey into spices started when Emmy bought some suya and pepper soup spices from an African shop in the UK which didn't give his dishes the same taste as the ones he used to have back home…This fuelled his determination to source authentic-tasting spices based on his mother’s family recipe. AY couldn’t stop gushing about the flavour, taste, ingredients, aroma and how she didn’t have to mix and blend so many spices to get the quality she aspired to. This was a big win in Emmy’s book :)
Following this discovery, we both decided to share our spices with friends and family and the feedback so far has been incredible. We are excited about this opportunity to share our spice blends with you and can't wait to hear what you think. Please tag us to your creations @omoakinuk on Instagram or send them directly to us at omoakinuk@gmail.com.
Happy shopping!
Emmy (The Oversabi Cook) & AY (The Lazy Cook)