Omari McQueen: The 11-year-old boy cooking up a vegan empire

It’s not unusual for an interview subject to arrive accompanied by a PR, but not many show up with their mum.

But Omari McQueen is not your normal interview subject. He’s an entrepreneur who runs his own vegan food brand, but he’s also 11 years old so it’s not surprising that his mum has joined him.

He started his company, Dipalicious, in 2018 and since then has attracted a huge amount of attention (and awards) for his food, opened his first pop-up restaurant in August and is already looking to the next brand extensions.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that he is the camera-friendly front for a pushy parent, but on meeting Omari, it is clear he is definitely the master of his own destiny and his ambitions (and confidence) know no bounds.

He caught the cooking bug when his father taught him and his brother how to cook when his mother was ill and his father was working long hours. Omari showed an early aptitude and passion for cooking and decided, as you do, that he wanted to make a business out of it.

“The business came about after I went to Kidzania (an enterprise where children practise being in business) but I had to work for people there,” he says.

“I didn’t like that, so I came home and told my mum that I don’t want to work for people – I want people to work for me. She asked me how I was going to do that, and I told her I was going to have my own business.”

His mother Leah, who had been giving Omari and his brother some rudimentary lessons in entrepreneurship, assumed it was just because he didn’t like being told what to do but when he explained his reasoning, she felt that she and her husband had to support him.

Apparently, the conversation went something like this:

Omari: “Working for others is like a pyramid scheme, so why wouldn’t I want to be at the top of my own pyramid?”

Leah: “Yeah…”

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Omari: “Everyone who owns a business is at the top of the pyramid and they get the most money?”

Leah: “Yeah…”

Omari: “So why wouldn’t I want to do that?”

Leah: “…”

Which is a pretty simple but compelling argument for starting a business and an argument that many, more mature entrepreneurs, have no doubt had with themselves.

It started with YouTube videos (filmed by mum) of Omari cooking vegan meals and extolling the virtues of a vegan diet. In his first video, he made a vegan pizza that he decided, while delicious, was a bit dry. So he wanted an accompanying dip and, being unsure if ketchup was vegan, made his own.

Researching online for what flavour combinations would work best, he came up with his own recipe and after a few stages of trial and error, found a combination he was happy with. And then immediately created two more flavours.

Following a positive reaction to his dips at UltraKids Business Fair, the decision was made to start selling his dips to a wider audience. On the back of that, he now runs vegan cookery classes for kids from his home kitchen and is in the process of creating a line of vegan ready meals for kids.

Omari is a beguiling combination of childlike innocence and impressive business clarity. There is no hint of the precocious stage kid, drilled relentlessly to deliver a polished act. He’s fidgety, giggles uncontrollably at times, polite, respectful – just an average kid that has some inner drive most of us lack.

Leah explains that while she sometimes finds it hard to keep up with his business ambitions, it’s very much a family affair at the moment with Omari acting as the visionary.

They have a board of three (Omari, Leah and dad Jay) planning and executing the next moves. It goes without saying that mum and dad get lumbered with the admin but they work together to try to realise the vision that Omari has for his business.

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That vision is somewhat childlike, but there is a conviction in Omari that is difficult to ignore.

“I want to bring people together with my food,” he says with a smile.

“And I want to have restaurants all over the world just like Gordon Ramsay. But my biggest goal is to make sure my daddy doesn’t have to drive a bus any more. Except for my bus.”

A key part of the dream is to have a restaurant on a bus so he (and his dad) can drive around bringing his vegan food to as many people as possible.

But if this sounds like the sweet but unobtainable dreams of a child, bear the following in mind. That pop-up restaurant he opened? Omari contacted Boxpark owner Roger Wade directly on LinkedIn, informing him that he was going to have a restaurant at the pop-up mall one day.

So impressed was Wade with Omari’s business, approach and ambition, he asked why he couldn’t do it now. So, after asking to speak to his mum, Wade agreed to waive the £1,000 fee for a week’s residency at the Croydon Boxpark and Omari was on the way to opening his first restaurant. At the age of 11.

And it is that boldness, that fearlessness, found in most successful entrepreneurs, that suggests Omari’s ambitions can be realised.

But is there anything that does worry or scare this impressive young entrepreneur?

“Only spiders,” he says with a giggle.