How ARK Provisions Got Ready for Retail
By the time ARK Provisions reached Checkers shelves, Claire Swanson had already learnt that demand can create its own kind of pressure.
The Cape Town confectionery brand, known for its Mexican-inspired sweets, started small enough to run from home. That gave Claire room to test the product, keep overheads low, and find out whether South Africans would respond to the sweet, sour and spicy flavours that first caught her attention in Mexico.
They did. Customers shared the sweets online, shops started asking about stock, and the business began to outgrow the setup that had made those early tests possible. Moving into formal retail took more than a popular product; it took food-safety processes, approved suppliers, reviewed packaging, reliable production, and enough working capital to pay for ingredients and manufacturing before retail payments came in.
The sweet that found her
Claire wasn’t looking for a business idea when she travelled to Mexico in 2019. On the final leg of the trip, after eating tacos in Mexico City, she crossed the road and spotted a woman in a traditional Mexican dress selling sweets. One tamarind-based sweet stopped her in her tracks.
“I told Jacqueline, my partner, to taste it,” she recalls. Jacqueline Cloete-Claire’s life partner, a founding partner in ARK and now a director – remembers it too: “We had eaten tamarind sweets before, but I didn’t realise how influential tamarind was in Mexican sweet culture.”
The flavours reminded Claire of sweets from her own South African childhood, and the idea stayed with her. During the Covid-19 period, still working in corporate, she began experimenting in her kitchen, drawing on a background in product development, packaging and branding.
“There was clearly demand,” Claire says of the response once she started sharing what she’d made. “I thought, ‘Why not now? Why not put all my effort into this?’” In September 2022, she resigned from her corporate job to focus on ARK full time.
Treating the home setup like a real business
Claire started ARK with what she had – credit-card funding and space at home. Part of the house was converted into a small food-safe production area: flooring installed, workstations built, hygiene procedures introduced, staff in uniform.
“We decided, ‘Let’s treat it like a real business,’” she says. That discipline kept overheads low while she refined the product and supplied smaller retailers. It also showed her, clearly, where the limits were. The business had proved people wanted the sweets – but a home kitchen could not carry ARK into formal retail.
What formal retail actually required
Getting onto shelves involved far more than a product people enjoyed. Ingredients once bought from local stores had to be sourced from approved suppliers with the right specifications. Documentation had to be in place. Legal agreements were needed to protect ARK and its manufacturing partner. Packaging and labelling went through several rounds of review before approval.
After leaving corporate, Claire applied to the Shoprite Group’s SMME supplier development initiative, now run through Shoprite Next Capital, which helps small, commercially viable businesses become retail suppliers – with guidance on compliance, food safety and pricing alongside access to market.
“It helped us think through additional factors such as margins and rebates,” Claire says. “The terms were flexible and lighter at first, so you could learn what it was like dealing with a retailer. It was very much a hand-holding situation. You grow slowly and sustainably.”
From the outside, ARK’s growth looked fast. From the inside, it felt gradual. “It wasn’t an overnight success, even if it looked that way. It took about four years.” ARK has since grown from 12 to 22 Checkers stores, with a range that includes Mixed Mexican Candy, Watermelon Mexican Candy, Peach Hearts and Strawberry Bites.
Knowing when to hand over
For a long time, Claire did almost everything herself – making sweets, packing orders, merchandising, deliveries, sales, admin. Eventually that was too much for one founder to carry. She partnered with a specialist confectionery manufacturer in Maitland, which now produces ARK’s recipes, while her team manages packaging, distribution and brand building.
“The co-packer partnership allows me to lift my head a little and focus on sales, marketing and growing the brand,” she says. It required trust as much as logistics – the manufacturer, a female-owned business, had believed in ARK before the formal partnership began. “They helped us become more professional.”
Retail also changed the business’s financial rhythm. Early on, Claire describes ARK as run “cleanly and scrappily.” But larger production runs and retail payment terms mean suppliers often pay for ingredients and logistics long before they’re paid for what’s sold- and as production grows, so does the cash needed upfront.
“We’re now looking at funding solutions,” she says. “Retail terms extend the time to payment. At first, we thought looking for funding was a sign of weakness. Now we realise it’s a normal part of manufacturing and production. Cash flow is more important than turnover, and we need working capital to support growth.”
What other food and retail founders can take from this
Prove the concept before you scale the setup. ARK started with a home kitchen and honest customer feedback, not a commercial kitchen and a listing. Certainty about demand should come before the capital outlay to meet it.
Treat “small” like it’s already real. Hygiene procedures, uniforms and proper workstations at the home-kitchen stage weren’t overkill – they were rehearsal for the standards formal retail would eventually demand.
A support programme can teach the commercial side, not just open the door. The Shoprite Next Capital process gave Claire a lighter-terms way to learn margins, rebates and retailer relationships before the stakes got higher.
Cash flow, not turnover, is the number to watch. Retail payment terms mean the bill for stock often lands months before the retailer pays for it. Growth that looks healthy on paper can still strain a business that hasn’t planned for that gap.
Know when to hand production over. Letting go of the thing you built by hand is hard, but it’s often what makes room for the parts of the business only you can do.
Claire’s advice to other founders is practical, not complicated: “Progress is better than perfection.” Relationships open more doors than cold calls, authenticity matters because customers buy into the people behind a brand, and founders shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help when the business reaches a new stage.
At Genfin, we work with established South African businesses feeling exactly this kind of pressure – where demand is real, but production, stock or retail payment terms are squeezing cash flow before the growth has a chance to pay for itself. If that sounds like where your business is right now, the right funding can help you take the next step without putting the whole operation under strain.
Ready to review your options?
Genfin offers unsecured business funding from R100 000 to R3 million, with a decision within 24 hours, no restriction on how the funds are used and no early settlement fees, so you can repay as soon as your client does. Apply in minutes and find out what your business qualifies for.