Bulls n Bears Entrepreneurship Zone :: Five successful African food entrepreneurs who are hungry for more

[Bulls n Bears]

 <http://www.nedbank.co.zw/> 

 

 


Tseday Asrat, Kaldi’s Coffee (Ethiopia)




In 2003, Tseday Asrat, CEO of Kaldi’s Coffee, was managing two thriving
clothing boutiques in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa. Then, due to city
planning and expansion, she was forced to vacate both premises, bringing her
stint as a fashion entrepreneur to an end.

However, Tseday didn’t let that deter her. A year later she opened the
first Kaldi’s Coffee café, modelled on international concepts such as
Starbucks and Costa. Today Kaldi’s has 38 cafés in operation and employs
more than 1,800 people. The company’s total sales in Ethiopia in 2017
amounted to 155 million birr ($5.5m).

As Kaldi’s grew, it became increasingly difficult to maintain consistency
in quality across the different outlets. Each café was sourcing milk from
local dairy farmers but it was often watered down or of poor quality. It
also obtained coffee from different suppliers, which meant the quality
fluctuated. Customer complaints began to come in.

“Instead of giving up, I saw it as an opportunity to start our own supply
company to assure Kaldi’s of the quality and quantities it needs. It
motivated me to do more and create more jobs,” Tseday says. As a result, she
diversified and added a dairy producer and milk-processing company, Loni
Agro, as well as a roastery which buys coffee on the Ethiopian Commodity
Exchange (ECX) to her business interests.


Monica Musonda, Java Foods (Zambia)




Monica Musonda

It was Monica Musonda’s experience as an employee of Dangote Group – a
Nigerian multinational founded by one of Africa’s richest men, Aliko Dangote
– that inspired her to take the plunge, quit her job and start Zambia-based
Java Foods.

She frequently accompanied Dangote on business trips and recalls that when
they visited Zambia, he would ask: ‘Where are the Zambian businessmen? Why
aren’t there more, and why are they not taking up the opportunities?’

“He could clearly see the opportunities in Zambia and that’s what
encouraged me to see things differently here,” Musonda notes.

The company’s first product was an instant noodle brand called Eezee
Noodles. At first, not many people believed the company would gain traction
in the Zambian food industry which was largely dominated by multinationals.
However, within three years Eezee Noodles was Zambia’s biggest instant
noodle brand and still accounts for 80% of Java Food’s sales today.


Ebele Enunwa, Sundry Foods and Sundry Markets (Nigeria)




Ebele Enunwa is the founder of Nigeria’s Sundry Foods. In 2004 the company
launched its first Kilimanjaro fast food restaurant in the city of Port
Harcourt. It has since rolled out dozens of outlets across the country.

Rice and chicken are big sellers in Nigeria but Enunwa also added local
dishes such as beans, plantain, yam and catfish. The Kilimanjaro chain
offers dine-in and takeaway services and recently launched an e-commerce
delivery service. He expects this will anchor the company’s growth.
“Deliveries currently account for less than 5% of restaurants’ revenue but
this is expected to grow. We need to perfect the logistics in terms of
timing, payment systems and ensure the service is fully reliable.”

He also built up a corporate catering venture with 12 contract catering
locations and two factory bakeries on the back of the restaurant business.
Both operate as divisions of Sundry Foods and service thousands of customers
daily, contributing approximately 20% of the company’s revenue.

In 2013 Enunwa spotted an opportunity in grocery retailing, and started
Sundry Markets. The supermarkets trade under the Marketsquare brand. Today
it has six modern supermarkets, with another six under construction. The
goal is to become one of the four largest grocery retailers by 2020.


Kasope Ladipo-Ajai, OmoAlata (Nigeria)




When travelling overseas with her husband, Nigerian Kasope Ladipo-Ajai
missed the comfort of her home country’s food. But even in African stores in
the countries they visited, they could never find Nigerian-produced spices
or products. This bothered Ladipo-Ajai. To her the gap in the market was
obvious: bring Nigerian food to the diaspora, and the world.

Acting on the opportunity, she initially decided to target the local
Nigerian market. So in 2012, Ladipo-Ajai and her husband founded OmoAlata, a
food processing and services company.

What differentiates the company from other local food businesses is
convenience. Preparing traditional Nigerian dishes is extremely
time-consuming: from finding tomatoes, onions and peppers at the market to
combining the pepper-spice mix and simmering the stew for hours on end to
achieve the correct consistency for the sauce. OmoAlata solves this problem
by providing ready-made soups, spices and pepper sauces made from organic
ingredients.

Ask Ladipo-Ajai about doing business in Nigeria and she replies that the
going gets tough – often. When setting up the factory, for example, they had
to deal with inconsistent power supply. “This is one of the biggest
challenges for any Nigerian business, especially those trading in perishable
products,” she says. “Supplying your own power is not an option as it
increases overheads too much and makes it impossible for small companies to
survive.”

OmoAlata therefore found ways to work around the unreliable electricity in
the factory but moved the refrigerated storage facility to a residential
area where power is guaranteed.


Jennifer Bash, Alaska Tanzania Industries (Tanzania)


 




Jennifer Bash firmly believes that if one focuses on solving a problem, the
money will come. The pain point she addressed with her food company Alaska
Tanzania was the shortage of properly packaged and branded local food
products.

“Tanzania, like most African countries, is blessed with an abundance of
natural resources, but not enough businesses are focusing on the processing
and packaging of those resources into consumer goods,” says Bash.

Today the company’s team of 25 processes, packages and distributes a range
of products, including eggs, rice, maize flour and sunflower oil to local
supermarkets and big international retailers like Food Lover’s Market and
Game. What makes Alaska Tanzania stand out from the rest is its quality
control systems and the convenience of its products. “Customers demand
quality from Alaska Tanzania.”

With its top-tier packaging, Alaska Tanzania has become a reputable name in
the country, and in 2016 was recognised as one of the top 50 local brands by
the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation and the Tanzania Bureau of
Standards.--Howwemadeitinafrica

 

 

 

Invest Wisely!

Bulls n Bears 

 

Telephone:    <tel:%2B263%204%202927658> +263 4 2927658

Cellphone:      <tel:%2B263%2077%20344%201674> +263 77 344 1674

Alt. Email:    <mailto:info at bulls.co.zw> info at bulls.co.zw  

Website:
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bulls.co.zw&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AF
QjCNH8LYgdY55h-XKseuM8Kpr-JKdfhQ> www.bulls.co.zw 

Blog:
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bulls.co.zw%2Fblog&sa=D&sntz=1
&usg=AFQjCNFoIy6F9IXAiYnSoPSgWDYsr8Sqtw> www.bulls.co.zw/blog

Twitter:                  @bullsbears2010

LinkedIn:               Bulls n Bears Zimbabwe

Facebook:
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FBullsBearsZimba
bwe&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGhb_A5rp4biV1dGHbgiAhUxQqBXA>
www.facebook.com/BullsBearsZimbabwe

Skype:         Bulls.Bears 



 

 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: winmail.dat
Type: application/ms-tnef
Size: 449689 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listmail.bulls.co.zw/pipermail/bulls/attachments/20190306/7ab0baa6/attachment-0001.bin>