Start A Business

How to Start Small Town Business In Nigeria

How to Start Small Town Business In Nigeria

Nigeria has over 248 cities with population of between 10,000 to 500,000 people, with tens of millions of Small Town businesses. If you are looking for Small Town business ideas, here’s a guide to help you run your small town business successfully or start from the scratch anywhere in Nigeria.

One key advantage of small town business is opportunity to be known instantly without much publicity. Marketing is easier, and you can differentiate your brand easily in any niche.

Moreover, you can create the kind of services tailored to your market easily because you can profile your target customers more precisely. And if you provide top notch product or service it spreads across the town faster through word of mouth publicity.

What’s A Small Town Business?

A small town business is a business providing services targeted at customers living within a small town. In Nigeria, small towns are cities with population from 10,000 to 100,000. You can include any city that’s below 500,000 population.

Another Term that describes small town businesses is local business. But not all local businesses are in small towns. And not all small town businesses can be described as local business. Some businesses in small towns operate globally as well.

However, most successful businesses today started in small towns. Your An take advantage of the location to fully test and fine tune your idea before launching out into a much larger target audience.

How Business Works In A Small Town

If you are starting out your business from a small town, you should understand how business works there. Although, you still need to do and follow proper business startup plan. But with a different approach that helps you address the immediate needs of your target audience.

Furthermore, there are important things that make a Small Town business successful. Here are some of the best ones:

  • Be a big brand in a small town
  • Place quality above your marketing
  • Locate your business to be easily accessible
  • Communicate your business model early
  • Focus on the right customers

People in small towns like to associate with big brands. It gives them the feeling of importance. Remember, most of them have also lived or do travel to big cities. This big brand strategy is very important to starting a small town business.

Another thing is to offer quality product or service. Your product will make your brand stand out. While rest of it, like location, business model, customer segmentation will help you serve those who really need what you offering.

Types of Small Town Business Ideas

There are several businesses you can start in a small town. One way to pick a small town business idea is to examine the ideas based on your training or experience. I have also classified these small town businesses into for special categories to help you understand what’s applicable to you.

Below are the main categories:

  1. Service Business
  2. Retail Business
  3. Construction Business
  4. Farm Business
  5. Industrial Business

Small Town Service Business

One of the biggest industry in any society is the service industry. This also applies to small towns. You will find more categories under the service business than any other opportunities available for entrepreneurs in a small town.

The list is quite long, and I may not even be able to remember all of them in this article. You can help me add those you remember in the comment section. I will gladly pick it up from there and include them when next I’m editing this post.

  • Security service
  • Cleaning service
  • Delivery service
  • Transport service
  • Car repair service
  • Phone repair service
  • Computer repair service
  • Air conditioners repair service
  • TV and Radio repair service
  • Rental service
  • Plumbing service
  • Floor and wall Tiles service
  • Educational services
  • Ushering service
  • Bar service
  • Salon service
  • Cloth making service
  • Shoe repair service
  • Hospitality service
  • Medical service

Small Town Retail Business

The retail business is a very important category in small town businesses. It’s the second largest category after service business. Although, some retail businesses offer more than one niche product to enjoy higher patronage.

But I have made separate lists where applicable.

  • Food retail business
  • Cosmetics retail business
  • Drug retail business
  • Cooking Gas retail business
  • Farm produce retail business
  • Building material retail business
  • Baby products retail business
  • Shoe retail business
  • Supermarket business
  • Spare parts retail business
  • Petrol retail business

Small Town Construction Business

There maybe very few companies in the construction business in small towns, but there are many individuals who are involved in this sector. However, construction is one of the major capital projects you can find in small towns, especially developing ones.

In Nigeria, home construction work are the biggest direct revenue migration opportunity. Because most of these small towns are people’s villages. Some of who live in big cities and overseas. But they send money home to build houses for them.

  • Building Construction
  • Road construction
  • Block molding
  • Metal construction
  • Wood construction

Small Town Farm Business

Farming is one of the major occupation of most people is small towns. Most of what’s eaten in big towns are produce from the smaller ones. Also, the era of subsistent farming culture is gone. Farmers now approach it like a business. They farm for income and not just for food.

Here are some of the farming business main categories you can engage with:

  • Vegetable farming business
  • Fruit farming business
  • Livestock farming business
  • Cash crop farming

From these main categories you can further dilute them to smaller categories and pick what you can focus on.

Small Town Industrial Business

If you are thinking about building your own manufacturing business. Small towns are best for it. Because you will enjoy cheaper land cost, lower labour cost, and also affordable raw materials for your production.

  • Food manufacturing
  • Plastic manufacturing
  • Shoe manufacturing
  • Textile manufacturing

However, these category deals with everything Production. So, it’s not limited to just the few options listed above. You can enlarge the options by including what’s doable in your town.

Small Town Business Strategies

A good strategy should help you improve your small town business. Because you may practically know most of the people in your town. It’s important you develop a system that encourages more people to keep patronizing your business.

Here are a few ideas to incorporate:

  • Build Trust with Customers
  • Show Your Experience In The Niche
  • Find The Right Location for Your Kind of Niche
  • Explore Local Business Marketing Strategies
  • Small Town SEO Marketing
  • Rebranding Your Small Town Business
  • Hire People Who Love What They Do

Build Trust with Customers

The highest equity you can have in a small town business is trust with customers. Most especially in this current Nigerian market, people are easily attracted to businesses they can trust. If you achieve it, you must have made future investment in marketing that will keep paying you back for life.

Show Your Experience

In a competitive market, customers are given lots of choices. That means their will be more customers who will be interested in who can offer them the best service or product. In trying to be an expert, don’t

Find The Right Location

If your business is location based, find the right location to setup your business. A good location gives your business 80% more exposure to the more customers. It’s not something you should take lightly.

Location is more important if your business deals a lot with walk in customers.

Explore Local Business Marketing

Local business marketing is nothing new. However, I will advise that you explore Google My Business listing. This listing will give your business a special position in your city for those Search about your niche online.

Also, you can explore Google marketplace to post your products and get free exposure in your city. The big advantage is that it only showcase your business to those searching from your city.

Small Town SEO Marketing

SEO marketing is an integral part of marketing a small town business. Create social media profiles and use them regularly. If you have a website, which you should, create a blog section to share more information.

However, I recommend you explore local blogs in your town to publish information about your business.

Rebranding Your Small Town Business

Constantly give your business a facelift and improve some of your ailing facilities. It’s not okay to continue using dilapidated equipments. It gives sign of a crumbling business. Remember, it’s not only your customers that sees them, your competitors do too.

Hire People Who Love What You Do

Employment plan is a very important aspect of small town business in Nigeria. You must know that the brightest ones may have relocated to big cities to work there. And if there are still some remaining, they would be working for the best businesses in the town.

So, how do you find the right employees for your small town business? It’s not enough to look at their CV and say this one is most qualified. Consider their educational qualification less.

I would rather advise that you pay more attention to the stories about their lives, how they have solved challenges situations in their lives. Most importantly, if they have experienced any very difficult situation and how they solved it.

You should be looking at their personality, their goals in life and what they can do in difficult times with what they have.

Conclusion

If you are going to create successful small businesses in Nigeria, target small cities. What many don’t realize is that they have the same market size as sections of the big cities.

Moreover, it’s much easier to capture a small town market than the big city market. A small town market with population of about 100,000 or more people is an easy target when growing your business.

Follow the ideas shared in this post to plan and start your small town business.

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Personal Finance

How to Earn Daily Passive Income With Position Exchange

Position Exchange is a decentralized Cryptocurrency Exchange. You can buy, sell or trade cryptocurrencies on the exchange. You can also earn daily passive income by staking POSI coin or other coins in the pools and farms.

Passive income is opportunity to earn income without necessarily doing anything. You only need to set it up and it starts earning you income daily. A very common example of passive income is books. You only write the book once and it keeps earning you income for life.

However, crypto passive income works like conventional banking fixed deposit account – where you fix certain amount of money and get paid returns in percentage.

What’s Position Exchange Passive Income

Let’s explore Position Exchange passive income opportunity. If you want to earn passive income with Position Exchange you need to understand all the different options available.

The options are not the same. Each opportunity to earn is different from the other. Some are designed to last as long as the platform would last – which means they have no end. While some are designed with limited time – and they will end someday.

By understanding each of them, you will be able to make your decision properly. You will also need to know how to activate each of the options, the benefits and disadvantages associated with them.

However, the options are categorized into POOLs and FARMS. Each of the passive income are found in either one of the categories. Below are options to earn passive income with Position Exchange:

  • POSI Classic Pool
  • PTX Pool
  • POSI NFT Pool
  • POSI Bond
  • BUSD Auto Farm
  • BNB Auto Farm
  • POSI-BUSD Manual Farm
  • POSI-BNB Manual Farm
  • Stablecoin NFT Farms
  • POSI Chains Validation

Moreover, Position Exchange now operates a dual token ecosystem. This new ecosystem allows it to pay earnings with PTX token instead of with POSI coin.

How POSI Staking Works

Staking is like bank fixed deposit. The only difference is that Staking is more flexible. But they are similar. It requires you to stake or fix certain funds for a period of time and get paid some percentage in return.

That means the Staking pool or farm will provide conditions like, what to stake, how to stake it, what to earn, and how to earn it.

However, you must understand the differences in each of POSI daily passive income opportunities. You will see each pool or farm present different offers, benefits, fees, and limitations. Understanding each pool or farm will help you take advantage of the best option possible for you.

POSI Classic Pool

POSI classic pool the simplest pool to activate. All you need is to buy POSI and staked it in the classic pool and you will start earning passive income immediately. This pool is also one of the lowest earning pool because of its low APR (Annual Percentage Return).

But when depositing your fund Position Exchange will take 1% fee from your investment sum upfront. Also, harvest is locked up for only 12 hours.

PTX Pool

PTX (Position Token X) Pool is also like POSI classic pool. However, you can only stake PTX in the pool. The returns are also low like POSI classic. To activate this pool, buy PTX token from Position Exchange spot trading platform and stake it in the pool to start earning immediately.

POSI NFT Pool

POSI NFT Pool is a unique earning opportunity with POSI NFTs. It gives you opportunity to cast NFTs with POSI coin and stake it in the pool to earn passive income. You can cast an NFT with any amount of POSI token.

However, when you harvest your earning, POSI deducts 5% from your revenue.

POSI Bond

POSI bonds are unique passive income opportunity. They provide you with stable and high earning annual percentage return (APR), but with limited time offer. That means a bond is designed with duration in mind. For instance, some bonds can be for 1 month, or as long as 2 years.

But once the time is reached you have to liquidate your investment. To activate a bond you will need POSI coin to buy units of the bonds from POSI bond exchange. However, no matter how much you bought the bond it has a fixed amount at liquidation period.

For instance, if you bought a unit for 50 POSI and the fixed rate is 13 POSI, during liquidation time you will get just 13 POSI instead of the 50 POSI you paid for it. But POSI bonds have the highest APR.

BUSD Auto Farm

BUSD auto farm is the simplest way to invest in POSI farm. It does two major functions for you. It helps you create an LP token, which is one of the basic requirements for investing in POSI farms.

It also helps you reinvest by compounding your earnings at specified times daily. But the biggest challenge with auto farm is the cost of compounding. To invest in auto farm you must have a lot of funds to invest. At least from $3,000 and above.

BNB Auto Farm

BNB auto farm is the same with BUSD auto farm. The difference is just the coin used in the investment. While BUSD is a stable coin, BNB is not. But they both function the same way, excerpt for the number of daily compounding times.

To activate BNB auto farm you need only BNB coin.

POSI-BUSD Manual Farm

POSI-BUSD manual farm is advisable for investors with small amount of funds. Although, the farm functions like the BUSD auto farm but with manual capabilities. It doesn’t offer auto compounding and won’t create your LP token for you.

So, for this manual farm you need to create LP tokens and compound your earnings manually at your own volition. But you will need equal amount of POSI and BUSD coins to create an LP token to active your farm.

POSI-BNB Manual Farm

POSI-BNB manual farm is also another version of BNB auto farm without the auto functions. It works in the same way as POSI-BUSD manual farm. The only difference between the two is that POSI is paired with BNB instead of BUSD.

The main difference between BUSD and BNB is that BUSD is a stable coin while BNB coin is not.

Stablecoin NFT Farms

This farm is NFT liquidity farm using stable coins instead of POSI. But you will still earn rewards in PTX token. The primary stable coin in use is BUSD coin, which can be paired with any of the following stable coins (DAI, USDT, and USDC) to create the NFT liquidity token.

The main benefit of this farm is that it doesn’t experience impermanent loss. Which is value depreciation if price dips below your purchase cost.

POSI Chain Validation

POSI chain is Position Exchange Blockchain. To help validate transactions investors are also giving opportunity to stake their POSI in the POSI Blockchain. This gives rights to investors to become validators. For those who can’t afford to become validators, they can delegate their POSI coin to a Validation and also earn share in the network transaction.

The validators are what powers POSI chains Blockchain.

Conclusion

You have to login to Position Exchange website to start analyzing these opportunities for yourself. Examine requirements for each pool or farm. Check the APR and possibly calculate your earnings based on what you plan to invest.

Also, consider some fees like deposit and harvest fees. For APR calculation, mirror it to as low as daily earnings. Moreover, the earnings from each pools and farms won’t be same with others.

You must decide your plan. Some in esters prefer POSI classic pool and NFT pool because they want to keep all their investment in POSI. While some use the farms to earn more passive income. Those who invest in bonds have short term plan, but desire high APR.

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Property Business

AN IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF BUILDING CONSTRUCTION YOU NEED TO GET RIGHT

Architecture is the first stage in building construction. It brings to life the dreams & projected values of any given building.

However, the complete match with this projected values is best achieved when there is a complete synergy among all the compartments of building construction right fom the inception to the end – building plan, construction, furnishing.

In Nigeria for example, majority of the people follow the common construction practice of a client getting a building plan from a certified Architect, approach an entirely different certified construction Engineer, then approach entirely another certified furnishing firm to furnish the house.

In as much as this practice is standard & beautiful approach, it sometimes create some avoidable lapses which could be too late to correct when they start showing up at the later stages. Even when the building has a good plan, constructed with best quality materials & furnished with the best & sophisticated materials/items, all may be in isolation of one another, lacking the SIMPLE BUT BASIC INPUTS that can create BEST SPACE MANAGEMENT for the maximum luxury needed

Perfect SPACE MANAGEMENT in construction/furnishing of a building is the bedrock for a Perfect Luxury. And this suggests the need to take your building plan to a company like Cieno Group, who have a deep knowledge of all the building construction compartments, a complete “GURU IN SPACE MANAGEMENT” as to identify some of the lapses that may show up maybe at the tail end of the entire project.

As a tourist, I had seen beautiful hotel rooms of high standard with quality furnishing, yet may lack the best desired comfort maybe because of the decision on the door opening direction or the charging pot (socket) not being at the best position for a maximum comfort or even some rooms seemingly likited spacing whereas some good decisions would have created a better space management, thereby producing a more spacious environment. WE HAVE HELPED MANY OUT OF SUCH QUAGMIRE & CAN ALSO MAKE YOU A BENEFICIARY.

In the spirit of this festive period, we are proud to offer such Advisory Services for FREE.

ARE ABOUT TO START A BUILDING PROJECT OR YOU ALREADY HAVE YOUR BUILDING PLAN? YOU CAN REACH OUT TO US FOR SOME PROFESSIONAL ADVISES AND ADJUSTMENTS WHERE NECESSARY. EVEN IF YOU HAVE GOT TO THE CONSTRUCTION LEVEL OR HAVE COMPLETED, WE CAN STILL BRING A SMILE ON YOUR FACE –

  1. Save you some money
  2. Add much more value to your project
  3. Create a full sense of fulfillment & safety,
    ALL FOR FREE OF CHARGE

Contact us on 08036740616

At CIENO GROUP, we pride in adding great value to you once we’ve met

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Product Review

How to Identify Fake Cosmetic Product

One of the challenges of maintaining a beautiful skin in Nigeria is having to deal with fake cosmetic product. It’s becoming difficult today to differentiate between original cosmetics and the fake ones.

In fact, what dominates most markets across Nigeria are the fake ones. Most of the Cosmetic shops are crazy about selling cheaper to attract more customer, and to also make more profit.

Funny enough, some fake products are also sold by major Cosmetic shops. It’s not just the small shops that sells fake products, the big ones are also culprits. However, the most faked cosmetic products are popular ones. Remember, those faking them are looking to make money.

Why You Should Avoid Fake Cosmetic Product

Even though you don’t intentionally buy fake cosmetics, you should be careful to avoid using them unknowingly. The damage to your skin may take months to correct and at a higher cost.

You probably don’t know. But if you are really observing your skin you should have noticed some damages caused by the fake products. Sometimes, it comes is discoloration of your skin. It also dry your skin and create some form of skin scale.

Another noticeable feature is rashes. Some can give you even body odor. Fake cosmetics are very harmful to your skin more than you can know.

On the health side, these bad chemical in fake, substandard or even the so called Organic cosmetics don’t end their destruction on your skin alone. They are absorbed into your body and the end up in your liver. Imagine the compounding destruction.

Tips to Identify Fake Cosmetic Product

Before now, the only way to tell the difference between fake cosmetics and the original one is through their packaging. Fake ones are usually poorly packaged. But that has changed over the years, as criminals perfect their crimes.

You can hardly identify fakes just by looking at their packaging. So, use this tips to carefully buy your cosmetics.

  • Stop Looking for cheap price
  • Buy cosmetics only at a trusted shop
  • Destroy or Keep Your Used Cosmetic Containers
  • Understand Product Form, Fluid and Texture
  • Avoid Buying Expired Cosmetics
  • Be Careful with Organic Products

Note: in spite of all these tips, one should be careful when buying cosmetics. My best advise is to only buy from a trusted shop. Avoid buying from any shop you find near you. If you trust an online store it’s also good to buy from them.

One of the reasons I would recommend an online cosmetic store is the return policy. Any reliable online cosmetic store should promote return policy if the item is fake or substandard.

Stop Looking for Cheap Price

Cheap price means Cheap product. However, one of the ways to make cosmetics cheap is by making them fake and substandard. This has been going on in Nigeria for years. Most of the cheap cosmetics you buy are actual fake products.

Also, if you really know what happens in Nigerian cosmetics you will be very careful. I always want you to remember that it’s your skin they are toying with. Fake and substandard cosmetics causes more damage to your skin.

If you can’t afford original products, please don’t just buy anything for your skin. It’s better you use palm kernel oil, which is actually healthy for your skin. But not the adulterated palm kernel oil.

Buy Cosmetics Only at a Trusted Shop

Stop buying cosmetics at any shop you see. If you haven’t been buying from a specific shop, trying finding one to stick with. It’s much safer. So that you can return it if you discover its fake.

Even if you buy online, always buy if there’s a return policy that also covers Fake and substandard products. Also, while it’s ideal to buy from big shops, it’s not only big shops that care about quality and originality.

I know there are equally some good small shops that sell original cosmetics but they are few and hard to Identify. Any shop that cannot guarantee their products and offer you return policy if it’s fake or substandard don’t buy from them.

It’s your skin they are toying with, so don’t let them. They should give you guarantee or don’t buy.

Destroy or Keep Your Used Cosmetic Containers

Don’t throw away your used cosmetics container until you have bought another one. In fact, stop throwing away the container. Rather destroy it to stop it from getting into the hands of those who make fakes.

Most of the fakes were packaged in used containers, making them look like the original from their container. Also, keeping the container can help you check resemblance with the new purchase to ensure it’s not fake.

Understand Product Form, Fluid and Texture

Every cosmetic product is different from another. But one thing is obvious is that creams in cup maybe different from lotion or tube. Cup cream tend to be thicker than lotion and tubes. And they may also contain more oil due to its thickness.

If you know an original product it’s easier to discover if there’s any changes in the quality. But if you are new to the product, it’s best to only buy from reliable shop. The kind of evil going on in cosmetic business today is alarming.

Most of these Shop owners only care about turnover and profit. But you are the one suffering from their greed. Be careful.

 

 

Avoid Buying Expired Cosmetics

This one is worst to avoid because you can only tell if a product has expired by looking at the date of manufacturing and expiration. What if there’s no date? Or the date has been carefully altered?

In case you don’t know, some of the cosmetic stores sell expired products by either altering their dates or remixing the content if the product has discoloration. Yes, they can alter the form by mixing it together with good ones and repackaging it, or adding some chemicals to restore the colour.

Honestly, I can’t even tell a better way to avoid this. Rather, what you can only do is to buy from a trusted cosmetic shop.

Shopping for Cosmetics Online

There are not many online cosmetic stores in Nigeria. The reason is because there are cosmetic shops everywhere near you. But you have to get into the idea of buying cosmetics online. It has many benefits.

Buying online gives you right to return products if you discover its fake or substandard. It also helps you to understand the content of the product and research better about its benefits to your skin before you buy.

You can also compare prices and be sure you are not being cheated or sold low priced fake cosmetic product.

Be Careful With Organic Product

Even Organic cosmetics have their fake or substandard. The real problem with Organic cosmetic is there are many of such products in the market without proper standardization. In other words, their content cannot be guaranteed to take good care of your skin.

I can tell for free that some of their chemical components are very dangerous and harmful to your skin. Don’t forget, they are also unregulated product. And, even if you love Organic how do you tell if the content of the product is suitable for your skin type.

My advise is to avoid buying Organic Products from people you can’t trust. Or better still buy from only trusted brands that are regulated. Some chemicals are not good for your fragile skin. Be careful what you feed into your skin, because it enters your body and goes through your liver as well.

Advisory: there are equally great organic cosmetic products both from regulated and unregulated sources. I have seen some myself. So, I’m not generalize the idea of fake organic cosmetic product. I’m advocating that you buy only from trusted sources for your original and quality product.

Conclusion

I’m not just writing this to scare you. I’m a cosmetic dealer myself and I have seen what happens in the business. The evil is beyond what one person can correct. I have to find a way to educate you to protect yourself.

If you don’t know how dangerous fake and substandard cosmetics are, it can only be compared with expired, fake and substandard drugs. If you understand the danger of fake drugs, then you will begin to understand the dangers they are causing to your skin.

However, it’s not like the right products are not in the market. Some of you won’t buy it because you are looking for cheap cosmetics. And that’s how you offered your skin for destruction.

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Food Business

How to Start Event Food Vendor Business

Food vendor business is growing in popularity in Nigeria. Although, anyone can be a food vendor, yet not everyone can have a successful food vendor business. So, in this article, I want to show you how you can have a successful food vendor business and sell anywhere in Nigeria.

One of the unique truths about food vendor business is that you don’t have to be the cook or know how to cook or even have an office or restaurant where you cook. That means what you need is management skills, rather than cooking skills.

That takes us to the next point which is how to really get started in this business? What kind of foods are popular and successful with food vendors? How can a startup food vendor business compete with existing vendors? And what does it really cost to get started?

How Food Vendor Business works

Interestingly, food vendor business is also restaurant business but with a twist. Therefore, a restaurant can also be engage in the services of a food vendor. In other parts of the world, they may mean the same thing. But in Nigeria, food vendor business is a different class of restaurant business.

So, to clarify the difference, it means that Food Vendor Business is regarded as a restaurant business that cooks food on demand – but for a large group of people. This ‘but’ is what also differentiate it from home restaurant business, which is also a food on demand business.

That means, a food vendor is not the same as bukka joint or what Lagosians call ‘Iya-gutter’. That’s a group of food vendors that sell food at street corners or in shanties. However, a home restaurant business also engages in food vendor services. Don’t let the classifications fool you. They are all the same with just different approach to their business model.

A food vendor business takes bulk orders from customers to prepare food on demand. It could be for events like birthdays, weddings or burials – or bulk personal order for home use.

Learn The Business As A Beginner

If you haven’t been in the food business before, take your time to learn how it will all work out for you. You should even use a mentor to learn the ropes. Don’t assume it’s just food business that you will figure things out on your own.

What you learn from someone who’s already in the same business will save you lots of time and money you could have spent wrongly.

Moreover, it’s also a way of learning what your competitors already know that’s making them successful. So, don’t just think it’s about you learning how to cook, rather how to run a successful food vendor business.

If you wondering what kind of Nigeria food sell more in the food vendor business, my answer is rice is every form and recipe.

What Qualifies You to Start This Business?

The beauty of food vendor business is that you don’t even have to know how to cook. So, anyone can start this business if they have passion for food business. However, not knowing how to cook doesn’t mean you can just cook bad food.

No! But you can hire chefs or local cooks to help you out when ever you have orders to fulfill.

Anyone who wishes to Start Food Vendor Business can do so simply by learning how to manage a business. If you can run the business, know how to get customers regularly, and manage the people that help you, then you can run a successful food vendor business.

And the cost of startup is determined by you. It’s best to define your food business structure first, to enable you decide what you are offering and what you would need to offer it. That way, you don’t stock cooking gadgets you may hardly use.

How Lucrative is Food Vendor Business?

One thing you can’t take away from Nigerians is the love for good food. Nigerians love to eat. That’s why one of the requirements of a wife material is knowing how to cook.

Food business is amazingly lucrative. You cant do food business and lose, unless you don’t know what you are doing. It’s a high profit business – where you invest little and your profit margin is insanely awesome. And Nigerians love lavish parties.

However, according to Research and Markets website, the Nigerian food and grocery retail market had total revenues of $45.7 billion in 2020. That’s just for the main raw materials used in making the foods. Now, imagine how much cooked food made in the same year.

Challenges of Food Vendor Business

Before you decide Food Vendor Business is for you, also understand the challenges. The major challenge food vendors face is low patronage because of the target market or lack of proper marketing.

You will also have to deal with low quality Foodstuff. Imitations and low grade foodstuffs are all over the market. Don’t learn the hard way. It’s either you accept some apprenticeship or stick with buying only from major grocery stores.

Another challenge is bad referrals. Food vendor business thrive on referrals from customers who have bought your food or event guests that tasted your food. You should avoid bad referrals at all cost.

While you can deal with these challenges by making adjustments to market well and improve on the taste of your food, you cannot really avoid this last challenge. Travel risk is one challenge you may have to deal with.

If you live in a big city you might restrict your clientele within the city. But if your food is so good, you may not be able to do that, unless you have to disappoint some major customers.

Tips to Start Food Vendor Business

Now that you know you are qualified to Start Food Vendor Business, here are tips to help you get started. I have listed out the following tips for your consideration.

  • Start Cost Effectively And Upgrade As Your Grow
  • Brand Your Food Vendor Business
  • Model Your Food Vendor Business
  • Engage Commission Marketers
  • Build Strong Referral Strategy
  • Offer Professional Food Serving Bonus

You should also craft your food vendor business plan before starting out. If you haven’t done a business plan before, you can read the article on how to write a perfect business plan.

Start Cost Effectively And Upgrade As Your Grow

A lot of startups are primarily concerned about startup cost. I think that shouldn’t be a challenge if you think as a startup. Your first cooking job may not necessarily require high-tech gadgets to meet your order.

Start with what you can afford as a startup and probably upgrade as the need arises. Nobody is going to trust you to cook food for one thousand guests if you are just starting out. Honestly, you shouldn’t even jump to such offer if you haven’t handled 100 guest before.

Grow to meet up your cost. It’s a smarter way to start. You don’t want to mess up your brand by trying to prove you can do it when you know you weren’t prepared for it. Moreover, if you do a business plan, it will also take care your cost Plan for you.

 

 

Brand Your Food Vendor Business

One of the big factors of food vendor business success is branding. If your business would grow, branding will make it happen. Therefore, take branding seriously. I know the concern of most startups is usually the cost associated with branding.

But I don’t think branding a food vendor business should cost you much, unless you don’t understanding simple branding techniques. The whole idea of branding is to make your business visibly stand out, easily recognizable, and attractive enough to encourage regular patronage.

Model Your Food Vendor Business

Business models are often misunderstood by most startups. Some think it’s about ideas. A bit of it but more of process and strategy. I recommend that you take this food vendor business and remodel it in your own way.

A lot of us are still amazed at how brands like Uber and Airbnb created their business model out of already existing and age-long business models.

Interestingly, they didn’t do anything unusual or complex. Rather, they simplified a complex process. Taxi couldn’t be done any other way better than it was being done, not until Uber came along.

Engage Commission Marketers

Marketing can be difficult if you don’t know how. But you can leverage the power and influence of others to promote your business. Hire others who can help you with marketing on commission earning.

And there are many internet rats looking for opportunity to earn extra income you can explore.

Build Strong Referral Strategy

Having a strong referral marketing plan would attract more customers than you can possibly handle. But the secret to good referral is nothing but the following:

  • Amazing food taste
  • Your service packaging
  • Branding advantage
  • And marketing plan

I have attended an event where the food vendor, who happen not to have been there because they sent the food through a delivery service, attached a business card to every pack of food. After eating, most of the guests pocketed the card for future reference.

I also realize later that most of the guests used that vendor over and over. I got to know because I also attended their events.

Take advantage of every opportunity given to feed guests in an event to win more referral marketers. Party guests are your main target customers. If you can satisfy them, they will patronize you when they need a food vendor.

Offer Professional Food Serving Bonus

I know this is one of the services regularly offered by food vendors, but you can make yours exquisite. Recruited well trained waiters, and have clean uniforms to stand them out in every event. You can have different uniforms for different occasions. You can even bill high network customer for new uniforms for servers in their event.

Food serving can be provided as a special feature in your business. You can package this as another source of revenue as well.

Define The Target Customer

Even before you start out on your food vendor business, you must first identify all your potential customers. Your target customers shouldn’t be every customer profile for food business.

Be specific. The right way to identify your target customer is to first define your food vendor business model. Your business offer is a better way to determine those who would need your service and can afford the cost.

Let me classify some kind of food vendor customers:

  1. Event planners and managers
  2. Venue owners and managers
  3. Individual event owners

Event managers and venue managers can be your biggest source of attracting high net worth customers. You should target popular events places and approach celebrity event organizers to partner with them.

How to Market Your Food Vendor business

So far, I have shared some referral marketing ideas for your food business, but let me share some direct marketing tips you can use as well. However, your food variety and taste should be the key to your marketing plan.

Also, the best time to market your food vendor business is when ever you are providing food services to your customers. If you do this well, every customer you serve will be a contact point for more customers in the future. And you will never run out customers to serve.

Here are tips to explore:

  • Use your branding so well to promote your business. Make sure everyone who attended events you were hired to cook becomes addicted to your brand.
  • Deliberately give out souvenirs that guests can take home for use
  • Make some take away food packs customized for your clients with your brand
  • Get the master of ceremony to announce the company that made the food. You can achieve this in two ways easily – by making a special food pack for the MC and presenting it to him during the events. You can also request the MC to announce the cook of the event during the program.

Conclusion

Don’t pass over an opportunity when you see one. Even if you don’t like to cook, you like to eat. Let your love for eating drive you to start a food vendor service.

Moreover, your food taste is your signature brand. Carefully craft and maintain the best food recipes. When you are not serving customers, be experimenting on new food recipes you see online.

Finally, your ability to adapt to new food recipes would endear you to more clients. Event owners and organizers are looking for something new and appetizing for their events. You should give them options they didn’t know is there.

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Food Business

How to Start Your Own Home Restaurant Business

Home restaurant business is the new way of offering food delivery services in Nigeria. Restaurant business in post Covid-19 era is changing the way we buy and eat home cooked meals. The demand for home food is very high across the country.

And if you are desiring to start your own restaurant business but has been hindered by funds, here’s your key to starting one right away, even without startup funds. I will show you how other smart entrepreneurs has started their own home restaurant business.

You will not only learn how they did it but also how you can do it yourself. This is like the Uber of restaurant business. Yes, it has been perfected and believe me people are loving it this way.

But let me give the main key success factor – it’s knowing how to cook sweet and delicious meals people can’t resist ordering from their homes. If you offer anything short of it, your desire for home restaurant business will fail.

How Home Restaurant Business works

Home restaurant business model is not entirely new. It’s just a cost saving way smart food entrepreneurs discovered for starting out their business on small budget. They cut off cost of office space, hiring many staff, and cutting food wastage as well.

This model caters for customers who preorder food on a daily basis. Business is done from the kitchen in their homes – and they only cook for specific number of customers who have preordered their meals. Most times, even a day ahead.

Another key thing to consider is your meal packaging. Apart from the fact that your meals must be unique choices, not readily found at an affordable rates, it must include varieties.

For example, if you are offering stir-fried rice, you can include peppered goat meat or chicken or turkey, etcetera. It should also include some free options to go with the menu, like free bottle water and fruit juice. Think out of the box to create each days menu and make it a huge value proposition.

Who Should Start A Home Restaurant Business?

A home restaurant is ideal for entrepreneurs who can cook mouth watering meals, and desire to run their own restaurant from their home kitchen. You should also know how to cook unique meals customers crave for but not readily found in most conventional restaurants.

This idea is not for everyone who wants to start a restaurant. Its unique and should only be used by professional chefs or someone who desires to learn how to make sumptuous meals that are irresistible.

Nevertheless, a non professional chef with passion for food can also use this idea successfully. All you need is to create your own testy food ideas from existing food menus or just recreate good foods.

If you ask me, I think anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit can do this, even if you don’t know how to cook. You can hire a good chef to work for you.

 

 

How to Calculate Your Profitability

Even before you start this business, you should Calculate your profit potential. I must also advise that if you don’t have customers before starting, then don’t start. Home restaurant business is not a wait and see customer kind of business.

The customers won’t be coming to you. It’s you who would be going to them. If you don’t own customers before opening your doors for business then don’t open.

You can hire a smart marketing consultant to help you build your customer base before starting out. However, for your profit analysis, this is what I think you should do first. Define the cost of your pack of meal, and define your markup. Whatever you decide as the right percentage for markup, multiple that by the number of customers you will be serving daily.

Be as realistic as possible. For example, you can be cooking food for only 20 target customers daily. While your markup is N1,000 per meal. That also means once you hit 20 meal packs you are done for the day. If in some day you get group orders that pushes your limit and you cannot accommodate it, refuse the order or cancel early if you took it by mistake.

How to Price Your Meal Package

Pricing your meal rightly is important because of your target customers. It’s not just cheap meals that will attract them, but great meals will. It’s not an excuse to make your food costly. If you buy your food items in bulk it might help offer a competitive price.

However, don’t just focus on doing cheap food. It can piss-off your target customers. If you price your meals well, it will help you sell off fast everyday.

Your daily menu should help you in the pricing. Please don’t price everything together. If it’s rice you are cooking for the day, show the price for the rice, and the price of others like chicken, goat meat, salad, turkey, etcetera separate in your menu. It will help customer make their choice and decide quantity as well.

Key price index:

  • Food price
  • Meat price
  • Appetizers price
  • Delivery price
  • Free prices

I included free prices because there should be things you are offering for free to your customers. Like water, fruit juice, snacks, etcetera. This free things work on your customers in a different way. Always include it in all your daily menu.

Learn What Others Are Doing Well

Let me share with you want you need to learn about home restaurant business model. I’m your online business mentor now. But if you can get anyone whose successful in the restaurant business to mentor you that would be a plus for your dream.

here’s what those who are already making it big in home restaurant business are doing right.

They target high-end customers. Don’t try to attract every kind of customers. Know from day one who your customer is. You should make a mental picture of the profile of your target customer. And don’t compromise it for any reason.

Furthermore, they offer mouth watering testy meals. It’s not those type of junk fast food restaurant meals. The foods are excellent in every way. If you don’t know how to cook the best meals this idea won’t be for you. I’m not talking about I can cook people. It’s not an ego trip.

They brand their business and their packaging. Don’t settle for less. There’s something about branding food business. It gives a whole lot of impression about how sweet the food can be.

Tips to Start Home Restaurant Business

If starting a home restaurant business is your thing then follow this guide religiously. And there’s no better time to start but now. This model eliminates the challenges of having a large space to serve your customers. You don’t also have to worry about huge startup fund, or even hiring many workers.

All you may need to start cooking delicious meals and serving your customers might be right there in your home kitchen. Almost 80% of what’s needed to Start is already available with you.

But you will still need to go through some bucket list to be well prepared. I have done one for you. Help yourself by creating yours or modifying this one. I’m only focused on what’s key to starting up. You should find other things you may require that’s not listed here.

The listed guides are in no particular order. You can reorder the ideas in your own perspective.

  1. Go For Special Kind of Cuisine Training
  2. Get Top-Notch Kitchen Equipment
  3. Setup In-House Delivery Service
  4. Build A Customer Database
  5. Plan Your Daily Food Menu
  6. Define Your Delivery Locations
  7. Partner with reliable Foodstuff Supply

Go For Special Kind of Cuisine Training

I have this as one of the steps aspiring home restaurant entrepreneurs need to do. But I have a better way to do this with awesome result. You should already have your Menu plan to work together. If anything is more important, it should be your priority in this business.

There are tons of chef videos online, especially on YouTube. Find the Menu you want to offer and learn different ways you could make it mouth watering for your customers. When you are done studying, go practical. Follow the videos and start practicing how to cook them.

Get Top-Notch Kitchen Equipment

One of the important reason for getting your top notch kitchen equipment is to help you make meals faster and better. Moreover, kitchen equipment are your main startup needs.

So, get the best if you can. If the funds are not available now, start with what you can afford and upgrade later as the business begin to take shape. But by no means, don’t play with top notched kitchen gadgets.

A food processor may be costly but a food process can handle most of your kitchen gadget needs. It will also copy less space and minimize time waste in cleaning kitchen gadgets. Avoid buying everything once. It’s better to keep buying more as you need them than buying things you may never need.

Something else that may look little but it’s very important is measuring cups and spoons. Cooking is science, and science procedures must be accurate. For example, keeping your salt and pepper taste accurate at all times is important to achieving that tasty meal.

Here is a list of what you can start with:

  • Cooking equipment
  • Servingware
  • Storage containers
  • Sinks
  • Kitchen Display System
  • Point of sale system
  • Steam table
  • Washing equipment
  • Sharpening stone
  • Microwave
  • Ice maker
  • Gas or electric grill
  • Ovens
  • Ranges and ventilation
  • Food processors
  • Mixers
  • Slicers
  • Food prep counters and cutting boards
  • Freezers and refrigerators
  • Safety equipment
  • Storage racks and shelving

Setup In-House Delivery Service

Delivery service is key to successful home restaurant business. To get it right you must have a fast and efficient delivery service. At this point, depending on the city in Nigeria you are going to be operating in, you may need to have your own in-house bike delivery service.

However, the real issue here is managing the delivery service. If you have been involved in delivery logistics before you may have an idea of the huge challenges. The delivery guy is a bigger problem. But it can be managed properly.

You might need to hire a delivery logistics expert (consultant) to help you fine tune your delivery plan. Adopting the right delivery management model may keep you in business and help your bran deliver on its promises.

Note: some startups make the mistake of trying to earn extra income with their delivery service. That’s good but it might affect your core business. So, be smart and avoid extra income temptations.

Build The Right Customer Database

One of the fastest ways to build your first client database is to make them a free offer they can’t refuse. Everybody likes free food. But target the right customers who can afford your food. I can tell you that your first paying customers when you finally open up your home restaurant for business will be from this testing group.

This kind of marketing should be direct, and don’t complicate anything. Let the client know why you are doing it and what you are giving them for free. I will recommend you make a small beautifully designed daily menu list of the foods you will be serving and days you will be cooking them.

Moreover, if you haven’t done a service business before, I would recommend you hire a consultant to help you plan your home restaurant startup. Don’t assume you know what to do. It’s a smart move to use consultants to give you different perspective on the business.

Plan Your Daily Food Menu

Home restaurant business model has a little secret. It goes well with daily Menu. Everyday has its own different food menu. You don’t offer your customers same food everyday. You spice things up and make them look forward to Days their favorite meals will be on offer.

You can start out with your own menu plan and later make some adjustments to incorporate menu ideas from customers genuine feedbacks. One of the startup entrepreneurs started trying out list of exquisite menu ideas until she found the ones her customers can’t resist.

Define Your Delivery Locations

The issue with food delivery is timing. You cannot be everywhere at the same time, but you can be some place to serve some customers much better. Your location must be such you can cover within 2 to 3 hours with delivery.

One more thing that must be clear to you as a home restaurant startup is that you are in the business of serving lunch. Your customers are those who can’t do without lunch. If you find these set of customers you are in good business.

You can already see where it’s all headed to. That’s why your delivery must be top-notch. Lunch time is from 12 noon to 2pm. Your customers must get their food delivered within this timeframe.

Note: avoid all those delivery excuses. If customers can’t trust you to deliver on time they will start buying from another food vendor close-by.

Partner with Reliable Foodstuff Supply

You may not really think this mattered but it matters a lot. Foodstuff quality in the market now is under question. Finding the right foodstuffs to give you the right meal taste may be a challenge if you ignore using reliable foodstuff supply. 

Further more, most agricultural produce are chemically induced during cultivation. They don’t taste the same with organic produce. But organic foodstuffs retains not only there taste but also their colour when cooked. But its not so with non-organic produce.

Avoid buying from local markets unless you trust the seller. However, you may also find quality foodstuffs in major brand stores. It may be costlier than in local markets, but its better to get quality foodstuffs than but bad ones.

Target Customers for Home Restaurant Business

At this point you have already seen where this business is headed and the type of customers you should be targeting. But let’s take a look at them again more closely, incase you missed out something,

Here are possible target customers for your Home restaurant business:

  • Top business owners
  • Office executives
  • High end company workers
  • High income earners

You can reclassify this list based on your location. Some small cities may need to reclassify to suit their market. But don’t ignore classifying your target customers. This will help you start marketing.

If you can, hire a smart marketing consultant who understands home restaurant business to help you build your customer base or do it yourself. You need to have customers before you can start a successful home restaurant business.

How to Market Your Home Restaurant Business

Meanwhile, marketing is key to the success of home restaurant business or any business at all. So, you have to put up the right marketing plan if you hope to succeed. However, your marketing should be different because you have a limited number of customers you serve daily. But doing marketing will help you keep filling this list daily and creating scarcity or waiting list.

Tips to keep marketing going includes:

  • Promoting your daily meals on social media like Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Tiktok and Facebook.
  • Regularly sharing customers reviews on social media
  • Sending out daily meal menu for each day
  • Contacting your customers to ask them how they enjoyed your meal.

Don’t forget to equally use your packaging materials as marketing content. Branding your meal plate, spoon, cup, packaging is essential to your marketing. You may not start off with this level of branding but don’t ignore it when it’s time.

Your must important strategy will be how to get your first 100 customers to launch your business.

Conclusion

I was careful about the kind of home restaurant business I shared in this post. Knowing fully well of all the other options. The idea here is to serve lunch. You can explore other options if you want to. This idea is for those who want to operate a restaurant idea from their home kitchen.

Home restaurant is different from food vendor business. Even though a food vendor cooks food on demand like a home restaurant does, they don’t operate in the same way. I have equally written another post about food vendor business. You can also find that on this blog.

Finally, take the key points and explore on the opportunities. You can replicate this model anywhere in Nigeria. The demand for home food is high. Also, this model doesn’t work for lunch meals only. You can also explore it for breakfast meals. What may not fit in is dinner meals.

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Food Business

How to Start Local Foodstuff Supply Business (2023)

Foodstuff is in high demand now, as consumers struggle to find ways of spending less and getting more foodstuffs. Starting foodstuff supply business can be a lucrative way to earn highly needed daily income in a recession.

Foodstuff supply doesn’t require high capital to Start. It’s also very easy to build strong customer base, especially from close friends, relatives, colleagues at work and online fiends.

You can also make your foodstuff supply business irresistible by offering only hard to find foodstuffs that consumers crave for but hardly find where they live. If you are already a farming some food items, you can also use this model to start selling it directly to consumers in bulk purchase model.

How Foodstuff Supply Business Model Work

For most people, they buy foodstuff in small quantity where ever they want to make a pot of soup or prepare their usual family dishes. But the prevailing economic situation demands otherwise. Consumers want to buy on bulk to save high cost of buying small quantities.

So, some vendors started forming WhatsApp groups and promoting their foodstuff supply business to sell to customers in group buy model. Some group buy would take customers money in advantage to purchase the foodstuff, which it shared according to each customers contribution.

While another model that’s gaining online popularity is the direct bulk sale model to consumers when they want it. While the group buy is good, some customers may not need foodstuff or have money to buy when it’s being advertised.

All that is solved when seller offers foodstuff to customers when ever they can afford to buy – just like they do when they go to the market but in bulk and at a reduced cost.

Tips to Start Foodstuff Supply Business

Starting this Foodstuff supply business be the simplest startup you maybe venturing into. Although, I will still advise that you write down a simple business plan to help guide your ideas.

Furthermore, you will be needing capital. If you are opting for group buy foodstuff supply business model, you may not need any startup capital. But you will need a lot of goodwill from customers who already know and trust you.

See a list of things you should plan for:

  • Startup capital to help you procure Foodstuff in large quantity
  • Decide the kind of foodstuff to supply
  • Create a WhatsApp group or Facebook profile page
  • Get images of foodstuffs you will be selling
  • Define your target market realistically
  • Make logistics arrangement for home deliveries

Note: your Foodstuff supply business will be as good as your customer group.

 

 

List of Foodstuffs to Start Selling

I recommend that you pick your foodstuffs carefully. Don’t try to sell every foodstuff out there. Pick what your target market would buy regularly. Another way to pick your foodstuffs is to pick what you can offer at a better discount than market price.

Here are lists of just few of the foodstuffs to give you an idea of what to start supplying:

  • Palm oil
  • Garri
  • Dried fish
  • Tomatoes
  • Frozen fish
  • Fresh fish
  • Stockfish
  • Pepper
  • Onions
  • Crayfish
  • Life or frozen chicken
  • Yam
  • Coco yam
  • Beans

Note: this list is endless. There are so many local foodstuffs one can sell. In fact, the best sellers are not those common foodstuffs but the hard to find ones.

Target Customers for Your Foodstuff Supply Business

You don’t go far to find your customers, but you have to know who to sell to and target those customers. In a group buy, it’s easier to group those you know have average to high monthly income.

These people already buy foodstuffs every time. Your work is to give them discounted bulk offers and they will buy from you. If you do it well, they will start planning with you.

However, to avoid price challenges, you must be honest with your prices. Remember that these customers also go to the market. They will compare your prices and what they are getting. Only sell foodstuffs you are sure you can get better deals than market prices.

How to Promote Your Foodstuff Supply Business

In order to make your Foodstuff supply business work, marketing it regularly is important. While it’s good to promote your Foodstuff supply business, you have to utilize free marketing opportunities. Using paid advertising can equally impact on the cost of your foodstuff.

You have to realize that the first group of customers to patronize you are your close friends and office colleagues. Here are two best ways to promote your foodstuff supply business:

  1. Promote using WhatsApp status
  2. And with Facebook stories

Any other free promotional option is equally good. But these two are most common for the business and works best as well.

Conclusion

You cannot ignore certain truths about Foodstuff supply business model. It’s mostly based on trust. You have to build trust with your customers. And one of the ways to do that is using interactive platforms like Facebook profile page and WhatsApp groups.

Moreover, quality and good measurement is another way to enhance that trust. If your customers observe they are getting better deals from you, they will not only repeatedly buy from you, they will also refer their friends to you.

A farmer can start selling its farm produce using the same foodstuff supply model. Another big way to start earning money from foodstuff business is to Start an online foodstuff store. You will need eCommerce experience to make this work.

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Food Business

How to Start An Online Foodstuff Store (2023)

Foodstuff supply business is thriving both locally and among diasporas. Starting an online foodstuff store could be one unique idea whose opportunity has come. If you are looking for an online business you can start, online foodstuff store is highly profitable.

There’s high demand for local foodstuff among diaspora Nigerians living in Europe, America and Asia. The cost of buying local foodstuffs in those countries are skyrocketing everyday.

There are over 203 million diaspora Nigerians. It’s a huge market for anyone who can provide them with their favorite foodstuffs in a most effective ordering system they can trust. That way Nigerians anywhere in the world can order a bowl of fufu and expect it in 24 hours anywhere around the world.

You can tap into this opportunity to sell foodstuffs directly to both Nigerians at home and Nigerians in diaspora using the internet.

How Online Foodstuff Store Work

This online Foodstuff model is not different from the regular foodstuff business model but it introduces the eCommerce model to make it 24 hours operation. You are simply using eCommerce as a platform to sell your foodstuffs.

The only challenge you have is that you need to build your own eCommerce store for it. There are no global eCommerce platform that’s offering Nigerian local foodstuffs you can leverage. If you can find one that would be good, and takes away the burden of creating your own platform.

Interestingly, it’s no longer a complex idea to build successful eCommerce store. Even if you don’t know anything about eCommerce website design, you can hire a web developer or simply create your Foodstuff store on Shopify.

Another way to start your online Foodstuff Store might be using Facebook marketplace or Google My Business.

Tips to Start Online Foodstuff Store

There are key things you should consider when starting an online Foodstuff Store. Let me list some of the most important once for a startup.

  • You need to find a niche Foodstuff idea
  • Partner with quality foodstuff vendors
  • Have a strong marketing plan
  • Have an affordable logistics plan
  • Create a strong social media followers
  • Start branding from day one

Niche Foodstuff Store Idea

For a start, don’t stretch your business too thin by trying to offer more foodstuff varieties. Customers may demand you to do so and even lure you with promises to patronize you. Pick your niche Foodstuff idea and start with them.

It’s better to be known for something than to be known for nothing specific. Don’t be a jack of all trade from the very beginning. Start with just few and learn as you grow. Remember, mistakes will be made at every beginning in any business. Make yours in small sizes so you can recover from it easily.

Partner with Foodstuff Vendors

As a beginner, you may not understand some international standard requirements for exporting foodstuffs from Nigeria. Use good vendors who understand the business better than you. Learn from them before going fully to do it on your own.

Foodstuff Marketing Plan

Online Foodstuff Store is different from just running Foodstuff group buy on WhatsApp or Facebook. You need to advertise your foodstuff store since your main target customers are not your friends, colleagues and immediate family members.

Your marketing plan must be solid to work, and must be targeted at the rich customers to avoid wasting advert money reaching the wrong audience.

Foodstuff Logistics Plan

Since it’s an online store, you have to plan for logistics like delivery. You have to also know what the key selling point of your online foodstuff store really is. If you ask me, I would say “DELIVERY”.

Although, foodstuff remains your product, but that’s not majorly why customers may choose to buy from you. They can equally buy from any other foodstuff vendor. But an online Foodstuff Store would guarantee better logistics arrangement for international customers. That’s why they may buy from you.

Social Media Fanbase

Trust is one thing the internet doesn’t have in abundance. You need social media followers to help you build trust and referrals.

Work seriously on growing strong social media followers. But keep the growth within your target market. A strong social media will help you communicate regularly with your customers, build familiarity and increase trust level.

Start Branding From Day One

One of the ways to build trust online is by having a strong brand. Customers easily identify with brands. Keep your focus on branding your foodstuff store from day one. It will pay off eventually.

Branding will help you to set standards that would make your customers trust you more. It’s not just about logo but it includes your process, standard and communication.

Target Customers For Online Foodstuff Store

For online Foodstuff Store, your target customers would exceed beyond Nigerians home and abroad. You will find many citizens of other African countries patronizing most of your Nigerian foodstuff.

For a start and to help your marketing, just pick to target Nigeria customers. However, depending on your capacity and logistics provisions, you can pick either Nigerians at home or Nigerians abroad. If you can pick both target customers that would be huge for your business.

Selling to Nigerians abroad is the best customers to target with online foodstuff store. They have limited options of where to buy foodstuffs. But Nigerians at home may not offer good customer patronage because they have several places to buy.

What may attract local customers may be the quality of your foodstuffs. Since you will be exporting them outside of the country, the quality must be best and meets all international standard for foodstuff packaging.

How to Promote Your Online Foodstuff Business

There are several ways you can begin promoting your foodstuff store. Unlike foodstuff supply business idea, you have to make provision for marketing fund. The idea is to promote your store, which can pay for the advertising cost overtime. That way you are not under any financial stress to recover your advert cost from sales markup.

But you should only use mediums your target customers are frequently using. You should understand cost per customer when spending on advert.

Here are possible advertising platforms you can use to promote your online foodstuff store to reach the right target customers, whether they are locally or globally. However, the platform you decide to use for your store may have some advertising benefits as well.

For example, if you are using Facebook marketplace for your foodstuff store, Facebook advertising may benefit you more, it offers low cost per customer because its platform feature. While Google my Business marketplace would give you some organic search traffic benefits as well.

Moreover, building social media following is an important marketing tool. Instead of creating a page, use the normal profile page. This will ensure that every of your post is seen by most of your followers without restriction.

Conclusion

Online Foodstuff Store business is a lucrative opportunity. Many Nigerians in diaspora are already paying high cost for foodstuffs, and won’t mind buying it directly from a Nigerian online foodstuff store and have it delivered to them half way around the world.

But you must create a high standard services to match their appetite for high class service delivery.

Remember, starting well may include doing all the necessary planning – like packaging a business plan for your online foodstuff store. If you want world class business, start with world class mentality.

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Business Management

How to Revive Your LPG Plant & Make it Successfully

If you want to Revive your LPG plant, whether it’s abandoned, refurbished, unprofitable, reacquired or poorly managed, I will show you how best to revamp it and make it very successful again.

Reviving existing LPG plant cannot be a one size fits all plan. You have to treat each plant based on the nature of its current state and what you want to achieve. But one thing can be constant here, if you follow the right process you will get the best result in no time.

However, having a professional LPG consultant to work with would help along the way. It can be cheaper to just seek advise of a consultant and pay him for advising – while you do it yourself. That’s if you cannot afford to pay a consultant for a full service.

But if you can afford it, using a consultant to do the planning, implementation and restarting of the plant might just be the best strategy – especially if the plant is a large one.

Whatever you choose to do is fine as long as you get the desired results. So, let’s get started on the guidelines.

✅ Why Do You Want To Revive Your LPG Plant?

To start solving the problem, you have to first identify the problem. I mentioned some reasons you might want to Revive your LPG plant. It’s important you identify which one your plant falls into. Here’s the list again:

🔹️Abandoned LPG Plant
🔹️Unprofitable LPG Plant
🔹️Poorly Managed LPG Plant
🔹️Reacquired LPG Plant
🔹️Refurbished LPG Plant

These five reasons are common for those reviving their LPG plant. Each of the reasons may require different approach to Revive it. The reason for reviving the plant will determine your approach to revamping it.

What if you have more than one reason in the list here that applies to your plant? Let’s see how this reasons play out and what are your possible solutions.

✅ Reviving Abandoned LPG Plant

Before you start reviving an abandoned LPG plant, understanding why it was abandoned would help a lot. There are several reasons anyone could have abandoned a business.

Moreover, no one abandons a successful business unless it’s in a dispute situation. Any other reason is worth investigating. Well, assuming you were not the one that abandoned it.

What to do in this case to Revive your LPG plant that’s abandoned it to take a look at the level of decay in the facility and start with cleaning out the debris to reveal what beauty is till remaining of it. It’s at this point you can take stock of what’s in working condition and what needs to be fixed or replaced entirely.

Fixing up the plant is basically what’s needed first before any other considered problems fixable. But you should be aware of all the problems before attempting any fixes at all. You may also need to update its trading licensing with DPR.

✅ Reviving Unprofitable LPG Plant

A plant that’s unprofitable is a very delicate one to Revive. You don’t just treat it like an abandoned plant. Before you think of fixing it up, the most ideal thing to do is explore what make its unprofitable in the first place.

Things like:

🔹️How many KG of gas does it sell daily, weekly, monthly or yearly should be reviewed. If sales are low is a tale sign that more work needs to be done.
🔹️Review its location as well to ensure its targeting the right audience. Location do have a lot to do with LPG plant profit potential.
🔹️It can also be Management issue. And Management can comprise of several component both visible and invisible (LOL). Who manages the plant is as important as well.
🔹️Finally, supply could also be a reason its unprofitable. A bad supply schedule can affect a plant. If it constantly doesn’t have supply, it discourages customers and soon enough they start going to the competitor to buy.

If the issue is just with location, you can easily decide on a new one. Although the cost may be huge moving a plant to a new location. It’s like starting out completely new. Any other issue identified can simply be addressed with appropriate solution.

✅ Reviving Poorly Managed LPG Plant

Its sometimes difficult to classify a plant problem as being poorly managed, especially if the owner is the manager. Sadly, that’s the number one reason most plants are not profitable.

It starts from setup stage. The setup was poorly done. They were inexperienced but they never sort professional guidance mostly because they taught the consultant was asking for too much.

If you consider how much and years lost, you would have paid the little fee the consultant asked from you. However, the best solution for poorly managed plant is to identify the immediate management error before preferring any solution.

It could also involve changing the management. Surprisingly, most plants are being run by inexperienced people. Hire a professional or get a consultant to be a behind the scene manager. The fee is not much and it can be monthly or on retainer-ship.

✅ Reviving Reacquired LPG Plant

This one is not easy as well. Unless the plant is at optimal profit level – which is usually not the case, because no one would sell a very profitable business unless the offer was irresistible.

So, when you acquire an LPG plant, whatever condition you may think it’s the current state, always do some assessments. Review it’s market potential and opportunities. Examine its turnover, Cashflow and supply rate.

Check what the former owners were doing and review what more can be done to improve the profit status. If possible interview the former own and learn of their challenges and what they felt they could have done differently.

✅ Reviving Refurbished LPG Plant

I like this one the most because it’s less challenging. Any plant can do this at different time of their lifespan. It’s always good to have a refurbishing plan – like every year or after every two years.

You need to keep the plant shining and looking attractive. It doesn’t necessary have to be only old and abandoned plant that require refurbishing. If the plant paint starts looking dirty and you start noticing facility decay, it’s time to think of refurbishing.

Don’t forget that people like new things. Customers are attracted to new and good things. Any little improvement will excite your customers and probably bring back old customers.

✅ Conclusion

Don’t watch the investment go down without a fight to Revive your LPG plant. But don’t go about it the wrong way. It’s better to use the services of a consultant to achieve a better result than making the same mistakes doing it yourself.

However, if you had past experience about running an LPG plant and you think you know what you should fix that’s okay too.

My advise to do it yourself is to apply what works for you. Understand the problem first before attempting any fixes. Moreover, doing it yourself doesn’t mean you don’t need a consultant as adviser. Always be willing to pay someone who understands better to help you.

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Telecommunication

New MTN Mobile Data Plan That Actually Last 1 Month

Do you know new MTN mobile data plan that last for 30 days? Yeah, it’s the package that’s getting attention now among MTN data subscribers in Nigeria.

If you want to have a monthly Mobile Data plan to reduce how much you spend on Data or place yourself on a regular Data budget, this new Data plan is what you need.

Forget about all those one month Mobile Data plan that doesn’t last even a week. Some get exhausted few days after purchasing them. This one is different and won’t fail or get exhausted in one day or one week until your full 30 days subscription time expires.

The question now is, is this Mobile Data plan for you? Your answer would determine if you should consider reading or you may just read on for the sake of information.

✅ Which MTN Mobile Data Plan Do You Use?

Let’s start with how much you are currently spending on MTN Mobile Data. There are so many ways you can figure this out if you are not taking count of it.

🔹️What MTN Mobile Data plan do you usually buy?
🔹️How often do you buy this data plan daily, weekly or monthly?
🔹️How much does this Mobile Data plan cost?
🔹️And how much gigabyte data do you get for this data plan?

These questions would help you figure out your Mobile Data cost for one month. But that’s not all because you also need to have an affordable monthly data plan.

✅ How Much Can You Afford To Pay For Data Monthly?

If what you are currently paying for Mobile Data is poking holes in your finances, you may need to review it. However, Data in today’s world is equivalent to life.

When you don’t have data it’s almost as if something is missing in your life. Of course, people need to communicate more now than before.

But due to the cost of telephone calls, most people use internet calls to keep in touch cost effectively. It’s the reason for the growing adoption of chatting apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram, etcetera.

So, looking at your current Mobile Data, how much would you consider affordable for you?

✅ What’s The New MTN Mobile Data Plan?

If you are an MTN subscriber and you spend at least N1,000 to N3,000 weekly on Data, I want you to consider this new monthly data plan.

Well, the decision to adopt this plan is entirely yours but maybe when you know what it is you may try it out.

This new MTN monthly Mobile Data plan gives you actual 30 days full usage. You won’t run out of data in those 30 days. The plan gives you 45 gigabyte of data for one month. But this 45 gigabyte data is shared and allocated daily for 30 days.

That means you get only the daily allocation for use every single day of the 30 days limit. If you divide 45 gigabyte by 30 days you will get 1.5 gigabyte everyday.

That way, the Mobile Data plan last for the whole 30 days and not be exhausted by over usage in a particular day. But it’s not unlimited data plan – rather it allocated daily usage limit. You should only buy this plan if the daily allocation falls within your daily data need.

✅ How Much Does This Mobile Mobile Data Plan Cost?

The cost is also affordable compared to what’s charged for most data plan. If you are on the 3 gigabyte MTN monthly data plan, you pay N1,500. If you exhaust it within a week that means in one month you would have used 12 gigabyte and paid N6,000 for it.

But this special monthly Mobile Data plan cost just N6,000 for 45 gigabyte of Mobile Data.

✅ How Do You Get This MTN Mobile Data Plan?

At this point, what’s more important is how to get this data plan now. 45 gigabyte of data for N6,000, with 1.5 gigabyte daily allocation for 30 days is worth it. But it’s only available for MTN subscribers, and available on their mobile app.

Yes, you can start using this Mobile Data plan immediately. And it’s not a promo offer, nor a one-time offer. This 45 gigabyte mobile data is yours every month as you renew.

✅ Do You Have MTN App?

If you don’t have MTN App you can download it now on the IOS or play store platforms. The App is user friendly and it’s not just for this new data plan.

You can use it to connect your NIN (National Identity Number) with ease, buy and share airtime, subscribe to any MTN data plan – especially the special offers for only MTN App users. Most importantly, you can solve any of your support issues on the app or connect to their WhatsApp support through the App.

✅ Conclusion

Although, this Mobile Data plan is for only MTN subscribers, anyone can also use it by purchasing a new MTN line or migrating your existing number to MTN network.

If you current network can’t give you a cost effective Mobile Data plan, you should consider other network that can.

Finally, drop us a comment if this post is helpful to you. And if you were able to successfully start using this service do let us know so it can encourage others that it works.

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