About Mama Amaya's

This started with a trip to Zanzibar. The founder was travelling the Swahili Coast when he met Janet, who was born and raised in Tanzania — and what began as a trip turned into a family.

Janet brought years of East African cooking into the relationship: family recipes built on habanero, coriander, ginger, and the kind of patient, spice-forward cooking that doesn't rush. Cooking together became a daily habit, then a shared language, long before it was ever a business.

When their daughter Amaya was born, family started calling Janet "Mama Amaya" — a common East African tradition of referring to parents by their eldest child's name. It stuck, the way the best names do, and years later, when it was finally time to put a name on a bottle, there wasn't really another option.

Today there are two children, a kitchen that's always slightly too full of chillies, and a growing list of family recipes we're slowly turning into sauces. Jungle Sauce is the first. It won't be the last.

In many East African families, parents are traditionally known not by their own first name, but by their eldest child's — "Mama [Name]," "Baba [Name]." It's a small tradition, but it reflects something bigger about how family reshapes identity.

When our daughter Amaya was born, Janet became "Mama Amaya" to family and friends. The name was never a marketing decision — it's simply who she is, and it felt right to build the brand around that.