Behind every great brand is a story of courage, resilience, and purpose.
For Sarah Olagoke, founder of Tersly Foods, business is more than selling food—it’s about healing families, empowering women, and building healthier communities.
What started as a simple desire to make quick, nutritious meals has grown into a mission-driven enterprise inspired by her own journey through infertility and hormonal health struggles.
Today, Tersly Foods is redefining agroprocessing in Nigeria with nutrient-rich products that support women’s wellness and family nutrition, while its sister project, Bloom Woman Initiative, creates a safe space for women to learn, heal, and thrive.
In this conversation with Today Africa, Sarah opens up about her journey, the inspiration behind Tersly Foods, and how she’s using both her business and her non-profit, Bloom Woman Initiative, to change lives across communities.
If you’ve ever wondered how an entrepreneur can transform pain into purpose, build a brand rooted in integrity, and create real solutions for women and families, this is a story you won’t want to miss.
Tell us more about yourself
“My name is Sarah Olagoke. I am a mom and I’m married with a kid,” she says with the matter-of-factness of someone used to carrying multiple identities at once.
Her life, as she describes it, “is all about the business and the foundation.”
That duality—businesswoman and advocate—defines her. A graduate of Public Administration, Olagoke thrives in the tactile world of creation.
“Aside from being an agroprocessor, I am trained and skilled in leather, shoe, and bag making,” she says. “I love to work with my hands a lot.”
It’s a personal quirk that spills into every part of her work: to mold raw things into something beautiful, useful, and nourishing.
Tell us about your business
When Sarah Olagoke speaks about Tersly Foods, she speaks about people, not products.
“Tersly Foods is an agroprocessing company that transforms food crops into nutrient-dense food products with a focus on improving families’ nutrition and also promoting women’s reproductive health.”
For her, wellness begins with women. “When the woman eats healthy and she’s well, the family is well.
And that is when the community as a whole can thrive,” she insists. Her slogan captures it succinctly: Empower a woman to be healthy for a healthier community.
Tersly Foods’ catalog reflects this philosophy: fortified flours—sorghum blended with oats, wheat, or unripe plantain—alongside bean flour, rice flour, and gluten-free snacks.
Each is designed with intention: to support a family, to fit into the diet of a woman battling PCOS, or to provide options for those avoiding carbs.
“Trust me,” she says with quiet pride, “all our flours are versatile. You can use it for swallow. You can use it to bake. And you can use it to make kuri. And it is suitable for all ages—even for diasporas as well.”
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What inspired you to leave your 9-5 job and venture into entrepreneurship?
Entrepreneurship, for Olagoke, wasn’t a leap; it was a steady walk she had been making since her student days. At the University of Ibadan, she sold moimoi and pap on Saturdays.
During NYSC, she refined her craft in shoemaking, a skill she had already begun to pursue before service.
But her parents, like many of their generation, emphasized stability. “My parents believed that you have to have a stable job,” she recalls.
So she joined the 9-5 world while quietly experimenting with agroprocessing at home. “Everybody in my home is a busy person. So we need ready or easy-to-use food items.”
She tested her products—bean flour, rice flour, suya spice—on colleagues, even handing out questionnaires, a skill she borrowed from her university project days.
The response was clear: busy families wanted exactly what she was making.
Then her personal health transformed her mission.
Struggling with infertility, hormonal imbalance, and PCOS, she was told to change her diet. “Do I have to keep importing what I need to eat just because I want to regulate my hormones?” she asked herself.
Importing was costly, sometimes even unsafe.
Her roots offered an answer. She had inherited farmlands from her maternal grandparents in the North.
“Out of the family, I’m the only one that looks into agriculture, right from childhood,” she says.
Drawing on this, she researched across Nigeria, Benin, and Ivory Coast, discovering that local crops could provide the solutions she needed.
What began as survival became vision. “Along the line, my experience with infertility, hormonal imbalance, PCOS, and so many other things changed the mission and the vision of the brand and turned us into a more health-focused brand.”
That pivot birthed not only a new chapter for Tersly Foods but also Bloom Woman Initiative.
Tell us more about the goals and vision of Bloom Woman Initiative
If Tersly Foods is Sarah’s business, then Bloom Woman Initiative is her heart.
“It is us creating a safe space for women who are having these conditions that are tied to reproductive health,” Sarah Olagoke says.
In a society where women often whisper about their health—or stay silent altogether—Bloom Woman provides room for conversation.
“Some of them are even undiagnosed,” she explains. “And by the time they are diagnosed, the cases would have been so severe. Some would have to take out your womb. Some would not be able to conceive.”
The initiative offers education, medical outreach, and support groups. In 2024, they screened over 250 women for cervical and breast cancer in Ogun State, uncovering both urgent cases and relief for those with negative results.
Partnerships with doctors, nutritionists, and mental health advocates make the programs holistic.
This year, Bloom Women is focusing on younger girls under the theme Her Health, Her Future.
The goal: to “catch them young,” teaching them to listen to their bodies, understand reproductive health, and seek care early.
Are you offering all these things for free?
“They are for free,” Olagoke stresses. Cancer screenings, safe spaces, medical consultations—all cost nothing to the women who walk through Bloom’s doors.
The model is powered by Tersly Foods. “For every product that has been sold at Tersly Foods, a percentage is going into the Bloom Women Initiative account,” she explains.
Customers are not just buyers—they are stakeholders in a larger mission.
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How do you balance your time running these two organizations?
The answer, she says, is team. “I am a trained human resource and also an effective performance expert,” Sarah notes.
From the start, she built systems where she didn’t have to be everywhere at once. Her brothers were her first staff—one handling finance, another dispatch and social media. Cousins were dragged into working in the business during the holidays.
Delegation allowed her to expand. But the deeper motivation was personal.
After eight miscarriages, three failed IVF procedures, and “several” other attempts, she gave birth to her son in August 2023. That day, she launched Bloom Women Initiative.
“It was like a covenant that I had with God,” she says. “If I’m able to scale through this, I would use my life to impact other women.”
That’s how I’m able to manage my time. Because it’s not easy. Being a founder is not easy, together with building an NGO for that matter.
How do you turn your brand values into your daily product decisions?
Every bag of flour, every fortified blend is deliberate. “There is a story behind every product,” she says. “Everything is intentional.”
Tersly Foods invests in nutritionists and food scientists, training staff so deeply that “when you see our food scientist marketing the products, you will mistake her for our marketing officer.”
It’s an ethos of empowerment that extends from the factory floor to the consumer’s kitchen.
What’s one innovation at Tersly Foods so small but has a huge impact?
Sarah didn’t point to flashy machinery but to the process.
“Each segment of the products has its own specific equipment for it. And they have their own SOPs, their own specific ways of processing it.”
It’s a quiet innovation, but one that preserves quality and allows her team to fortify grains in ways that directly improve health.
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Between these two, which is harder? Getting Nigerians to care about healthy food or making your products affordable?
Her answer is quick: getting Nigerians to care. But it’s a challenge she has grown into. “We know the language to speak to them. We know the platforms to reach them. And we know how to sell to them.”
For Sarah, education makes price secondary. “We educate you to see the value of what we are giving you so that you can look beyond the price.”
How do you navigate the economic situation of the country as an entrepreneur?
Resilience, for her, is collaborative. She partners with other processors for bulk buying, repurposes waste into animal feed, and offers consultancy services to brands without facilities.
Nothing goes to waste. “We make sure that we reduce our waste as low as 5 – 10% of production,” she explains. Even discarded by-products find new life.
How do you make sure that your products are well preserved?
No preservatives, only discipline. Tersly adopts the first-in-first-out method, clear labeling, and strict batch management. “None of our products have preservatives. They are all naturally packed, well sealed, well packaged, and well labeled.”
Where do you see Tersly Foods in the next five years?
Her vision is pragmatic: dominate Ogun and Lagos first, then the Southwest, and from there expand across Nigeria.
“That is a big deal for us,” she says. But it’s not just about market reach—it’s about multiplying impact. “We still see ourselves even making a greater impact, empowering more families and women to eat healthy.”
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What lessons have you learned so far in your journey as an entrepreneur?
“Build your integrity,” she says, her voice steady. “Build it so loud, make it so loud, and don’t hide it.”
For her, integrity is the currency that sustains partnerships, teams, and trust.
The second lesson: delegation. The third: never stop learning. “Because innovation will never stop.”
What do you want a teenage girl to take away from your story?
Her final words are direct, as if she were speaking to her younger self.
“Young girl, you deserve a healthy life. It is your right to live and not just live, but live well. Live with intentionality. That’s it. With those two, every other thing will come as follows.
When you discover yourself, you’ll find other things easy. And then never stop believing in yourself. Just build yourself, and one day you will just be there.”
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