Inside Dickson Matata’s bet on Nairobi’s changing party culture

Matata is the founder of Crispy Life Events, the company behind Rhythm & Brunch, Millennials Cookout and Peaches & Cream, three properties that have found their place in Nairobi's increasingly sophisticated social calendar.

You still love the music. You still want to see your people. You have not suddenly become allergic to a good time. But somewhere between work, responsibilities, Sunday errands and the discovery that hangovers now arrive with consequences, stumbling home at 4am begins to feel less like freedom and more like poor planning.

More importantly, he realised there might be a business hiding inside that change.

On paper, they are events. There is music, food, fashion, drinks, DJs, live performers and the Nairobi ritual of telling your friends you are "almost there" while you are still deciding what to wear.

Matata, however, believes the music is only part of the transaction.

What people are really buying, he argues, is something harder to put on a poster: nostalgia, identity, community, discovery and the increasingly precious experience of being physically present with other people.

Source: Citizen Digital