Farida Ladipo-Ajayi founder of The Bookworm Cafe



Beautiful Farida Ladipo-Ajayi is the CEO/Founder of The Bookworm Café, a children’s book café that promotes a reading culture. In this interview, this dotting mum-of-two shares her passion to profit story with the Fabmum Team.

Please read and be inspired



Please tell us about the inspiration behind The Bookworm Cafe?[/i]

I’ve always been a bookworm. I read anything that was worth reading while I was growing up. I used to nurse dreams of working in a library or bookstore just because I thought that was the kind of job where I would sit down and read all day long. I have since found out that it’s not quite like this though, there’s hardly that much free time when you work with books. Naturally because I love books, I wanted to raise kids who would love books as well. So, when I was pregnant with my first child, I started researching ways to get kids to love books and everything I read pointed towards reading out loud to your children regularly.
I started reading to my first son bit by bit from when he was around 3 months. I discovered that I thoroughly enjoyed sharing books with my son. My experience with reading to him exposed to me to techniques for sharing books with children and this gave me the inspiration to start The Bookworm Café. In 2016, I applied for The Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Program and I filled in my idea for a book club/library for children. To my surprise my idea was picked and the mentorship and funding I received from that program actually gave birth to The Bookworm Café.

At what point did you realise that it is indeed a profitable business? 


During the Tony Elumelu Foundation program, we all had to come up with very detailed business plans including financials and experts reviewed these plans. The research I put into developing my business plan gave me an idea already about what the potential for the business could be.

You were still in paid employment at some point right?[i]

Yes I was in paid employment. I actually just resigned after juggling a 9-5 and a business for close to 9 months. It was quite a stressful 9 months because that meant I got very little sleep, as I had to resume work on my business after my kids had gone to bed at night. I don’t know where the strength came from but it just came and I worked until the early hours of the morning. To be very honest, I can’t say that I miss anything about my 9-5. I love the freedom to spend more time with my kids and especially the freedom to plan my own day.

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