When Covid-19 struck, Ghana’s celebrity husband and wife team Reggie Rockstone and Dr Zilla Limann went from running a nightclub to running a food delivery service and in the making, ended up with an accidental reality show.
“When COVID came in now, it was scary. We were stuck in our place because here we are running a place, been running for 10 years and all of a sudden we had to hit the breaks.”
So we, the husband and wife meditated on and prayed and it just dawned on us that people have to eat.”
The couple came up with a plan to offer a food delivery service to its customers. The food they focused on; one of Ghana’s most popular delicacies; waakye, a meal made of rice, sorghum leaves and beans.
“Now you can find a drink anywhere but if you choose your waakye, that is your waakye. If you speak to any Ghanaian they have their local seller, that’s who they go to. So all of these good folks who patronise this joint have to eat. So we were like ‘let’s take it to them’.”
Reggie Rockstone and Dr Zilla Limann run the Ghanaian nightclub, Reggie Rockstone’s Office also known as Django Bar in the capital, Accra.
Running the nightclub was a breeze. Running a catering service had now brought some new challenges for the power couple.
“Running a nightclub and running a catering delivery service are both challenging but I think the delivery aspect because it came without any preparation and that was the challenge,” Dr Zilla Limann said.
“I had no idea that it was going to go the way it went. You know when you’re so much under pressure, you’re confused, you just don’t know what to do? That was us for the first day but within the week it was like we had been doing this forever.”
In the new mix, the godfather of hiplife music, Reggie Rockstone and daughter of former president, Dr Zilla Limann also created an acclaimed online reality show.
Reggie says it’s the bloopers that made the show what it is today.
“When Covid hit we had to put out an infomercial about wearing gloves because my wife is a doctor. So one day I was like, I’ll film us and you tell the people and so she did.
But of course, we had some bloopers. So I put the bloopers out after the public services announcement and everybody cracked up.
People were like ‘Oh! That’s hilarious because that’s husband and wife’ and it’s from there that I got the idea and it just caught on. So now we have an accidental reality show.”
On the delivery front, Dr Limann says even though the pandemic will pass later, the delivery service won’t as they plan to stay in business.
“The delivery has come to stay really and it’s something Reggie has always been pushing for anyway. Our clients always asked, ‘don’t you do delivery?’
“And of course, without even doing it I knew it was a different ball game altogether compared to the stress of running the nightclub – what we were doing, I wasn’t ready to add the delivery aspect to it. But coronavirus happened and then we had to.”
“So there’s no turning back, it’s an addition. It’s working so it’s not going anywhere.”
