As the impacts of COVID-19 affected businesses and economic activity in the country, a 23-year-old took the risk of becoming an entrepreneur.
Sera Vuto started her seafood business after schools around the country came to a close when the first case of COVID-19 was recorded in the country in early March.
The tertiary student decided to open up her own little seafood business as she had a lot of time at home and to also help with the expenses.
“Currently I run a sea food catering business from home, it’s named Food Journal Fiji,” she said.
“So we do seafood in packs and we take orders from both Facebook and Instagram and we use it as a market platform.
“We also get our supply from the local market and we are giving back to the locals.”
According to Ms Vuto she works with other small and micro businesses as well, such as Talanoa Suppliers.
She said this was a fishing business where she would get her supplies from, which she incorporates with the produce from her backyard garden.
Ms Vuto runs her business with the support of her family and her two sisters who help her with the meals at home.
She was awarded a scholarship and had graduated with a micro-qualification in Establishing and Operating a Small Seafood Business last week on Friday.
“This training is really useful because in March I graduated from Pacific TAFE too in running small businesses, so this program was a way for me to learn more about handling seafood.
“I actually got to know about other businesses such as those that sell nama and some of the students were actually affected by the COVID-19.
“I am still a student at the University of the South Pacific and we were told that school would be closed for a few weeks.
“So we had to do online studies, so I felt like I am at home and I have nothing to do why not run a business.
“We stay with my dad and in this way I get to finance myself and also some of the stuff at home.”
She said her business was easy to run during the pandemic because they did deliveries to their customers which during the pandemic was a preferred service.
“They preferred to have their food delivered straight to them,” she said.
“That way they are not in contact with other people.
“On a busiest day I get about 50 orders from people working in offices because they told me that it was really hard for them to go and make market runs and get seafood from the market and the whole process of just making it into a meal.
“So they prefer it delivered to them ready-made.
“After this I plan to build on to the business and further expand it to other people.”
Ms Vuto said her experience and love for seafood came from home as it was a weekend delight for them.
She urged customers to support local businesses in this time of crisis as she believed this was a way of having revenue run within the economy as it would also help those families which have been greatly affected by the pandemic.
