Face behind ‘waakye in jars’ unveiled

The usual waakye is sold in packs, leaves, and/or polythene bags – the reason the sighting of the food in bottles triggered perpetual social media reactions.

From Tuesday up until now, #waakyelivesmatter has been occupying the number 1 spot on Twitter, Ghana trends, with tweeps wondering who would use an unconventional method to package the delicacy.

The brain behind the ‘waakye in jars’ is Ghana’s hiplife grandpapa Reggie Rockstone. The rapper credited to have caused a revolutionary in Ghana’s music has been running the waakye business with his wife for years at his Cantonment base with the brand name ‘RockzWaakye’.

In response to the conversation stoked by the decision to package waakye in jars, he humorously allayed fears in a tweet, saying “Fear not my fellow Ghanaians”.

He mentioned that the package is only for hotels and export as well as any person who may desire it.

“This is not for you who like your Rockzwaakye as we gave!” he stated. “This is an innovation that has hit the bank account so smile! Yours is same but this na deal! No plastic and very environmentally dope! Hotels n our fam outside and for you who want it so.”

Reggie Rockstone boasts of selling about 300 packs of waakye daily. He touts he has had great personalities including Sarkodie, Iddris Elba patronize his services.

“Waakye is my brand. The waakye has been my food since my upbringing…My mother even made a video explaining how waakye was introduced into my life. So, waakye has been in my life from infancy…We’re trying to make it international”, he said on Nkonkonsa TV.

“This has been the biggest so far. In fact, we have broken records. We have never sold this much ever before. We are moving as much as 300 packs of waakye day”.

Your greatest achievement is selling ‘waakye’ – Shatta Wale tells Reggie Rockstone

A few weeks ago, dancehall artiste Shatta Wale in an attempt to back his claim that Reggie Rockstone is poor, taunted the veteran for venturing in the waakye business.

Shatta Wale in an interview on TV3 said Reggie Rockstone’s music has had no impact in Ghana’s music scene, stressing that the waakye business is the only enterprise he can boast of.

“Your achievement is ‘waakye.’ Don’t tell me I have made a mistake [saying you made no impact]. You don’t know this industry than me. You didn’t motivate anyone with anything. Your hiplife didn’t make any impact,” Shatta Wale poked.

But Reggie Rockstone appeared unperturbed as he kept advertising his business.

He told Jay Foley: “My wife and I have been selling Waakye for ten years but what even gave me the motivation was the fact that people were trolling me for selling Waakye. For those ten years, Shatta Wale did not ‘hype’ my Waakye like people are saying but my wife and I were doing fine in selling it. So when the trolling started my wife and I was like are they crazy? Because we’ve been paying school fees and stuff with the money the waakye brings us.

“When the whole Shatta Wale thing came, it was the time corona had hit the nation so bad. And we were on lockdown so we couldn’t open our pub. So I was just finding a way to get something to do without selling alcohol since pubs were to close down. So just as that time, Shatta Wale made that comment, it went viral and my wife and I leveraged on that. Now the business is booming crazily.”

Source: ghanaweb.com