When Orly Peters emigrated from Israel to St. Louis, one of the things her family missed from their culture was the food.
“I'm an experienced home cook with an Israeli attorney background, and I had a lot of time to cook,” Peters said. “But the problem was that I didn't really have access to ingredients and food that tasted like home.”
Noticing that other international home chefs were having similar experiences to hers, Peters was inspired to create Habuyta, which is “home sweet home” in Hebrew. She also noticed that chefs didn’t have an avenue to showcase their talent.
The app is targeted toward immigrants in St. Louis and encourages them to connect with other cooks in the area. Habuyta users can buy and sell food products, share recipes and obtain resources to help their small businesses grow.
“Once a month, we feature a lot of local home cooks from around the world,” Peters said. “We call it traveling the world without a passport. … We talk about their challenges, about their stories, and of course, they feature a dish of their own.”
Faiza Muhambi, owner of Faiza’s Kitchen, stumbled upon Habuyta on social media one day. She signed up to be featured as a cook on Habuyta’s cooking show.
Muhambi is originally from Kenya. She got her start in the culinary world by cooking with her family and helping out at her mother’s restaurant. She eventually took over her mother’s restaurant before relocating to Dubai to work in the hotel industry. After 15 years in Dubai, Muhambi decided to move to St. Louis and call it home.
“Habuyta is not only an app, it's a space where people meet and connect,” Muhambi said. “You know, networking and the app brings people together from around the world. We have so many cooks from different countries … so I feel like the app has connected me to so many resources.”
To hear more about Orly and Faiza’s story and the Habuyta app, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube or click the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Jada Jones is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
