Entrepreneurship Zone: 12 April 2023 :: Ghana: Entrepreneur taps into demand for locally-sourced baby food

Wed Apr 12 01:12:46 CAT 2023

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Entrepreneurship Zone: 12 April 2023 ::    Ghana: Entrepreneur taps into
demand for locally-sourced baby food

*          

 <mailto:marketing at zitf.co.zw?subject=Exhibitor%20Training> 

Vera Osei-Bonsu is the founder of Start Right Nutrition and Eat Smart
Foods, two companies based in Ghana that specialise in producing
locally-sourced, nutritious baby and children’s food. In an interview with
Jeanette Clarke, she shared insights on growing a packaged food business,
from developing recipes to navigating manufacturing and distribution
challenges.

In 2012, Vera Osei-Bonsu gave birth to her first child. After six months of
exclusively breastfeeding, she sought healthy, local food options for the
weaning process.

However, she found only imported baby food on supermarket shelves, lacking
the nutritious local ingredients she wanted for her baby: millet, Guinea
corn, sorghum, and yellow corn. Taking matters into her own hands, she
processed these ingredients, incorporating vegetables and fruits like
carrots, oranges, coconut and sweet potatoes.

“I used my baby as a test to prove to people that we have ingredients that
can be as nutritious for our children as the imported products that were
flooding the shelves,” she says.

Osei-Bonsu discussed her feeding plan with health practitioners during her
child’s vaccination appointments. She named her fledgling company Start
Right Nutrition and shared the recipes on its social media platforms. A
growing following emerged, thanks to her diligent advocacy for the benefits
of these ingredients.

To expand the business, she needed capital. Her only assets at the time
were the over 100 recipes she created. These were compiled into a recipe
book and published, assisting mothers in transitioning their babies from
breastmilk to a balanced diet based on local ingredients.

“We had a massive turnout for the launch and all 500 initial copies were
sold out.”

Osei-Bonsu invested the proceeds to convert her recipes into cereal powders
that could be cooked in under five minutes. Friends and family tried the
products and vouched for their quality. The next step was establishing a
manufacturing facility and obtaining the necessary approvals from the Ghana
Standards Authority and certification from the Food and Drugs Authority.

Osei-Bonsu hired her first two employees and began searching for the
machinery to make the products. Adhering to the Food and Drugs Authority
guidelines, she found a shopfront spacious enough to be divided into the
necessary three areas: storage for raw materials, a processing section, and
a space for the finished products. She procured a dehydrator to remove
moisture from crops like millet and corn, converting them into powder.

Building a distribution network

The ultimate goal was to replace imported products on supermarket shelves
with locally sourced and produced baby food. However, achieving this has
been easier said than done; even now, Osei-Bonsu faces challenges getting
her product into larger retail supermarkets like Melcom and Shoprite.

Despite these challenges, the company found a dedicated target market to
engage directly. Osei-Bonsu and her small team forged relationships with
hospitals and mother care centres, providing the product for them to sell to
visiting mothers. Alongside this approach, a significant breakthrough came
when China Mall in Accra listed Start Right products.

Employees at the company’s factory

The company also discovered that many women who used the product for their
own children were interested in becoming resellers, adding their margin to
the wholesale price. “With our extensive database, built up over the years
of advocacy for good nutrition, we have set up WhatsApp groups in different
regions of Ghana,” says Osei-Bonsu. “Today, we have around 23 of those
groups for caregivers and that is how we have identified individual
distributors and resellers.”

The company suggests a recommended retail price, offering a 7% wholesale
discount for large orders. “We try to manage pricing as best we can with our
recommended price, but it is not possible to control it 100%,” Osei-Bonsu
admits.

The company’s products can also be found in smaller retail stores and
supermarkets throughout Ghana, as well as in its two own retail shops in
Greater Accra.

Expanding product offerings and battling imitators

In 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe, the focus
shifted towards healthy eating, bolstering immune systems, and fortifying
against the dangers of the virus.

“Adults could receive a vaccine, but children could not. I realised that we
couldn’t just Start Right, we had to Eat Smart as well – and that’s where
our second brand name originated,” explains Osei-Bonsu. The team crafted
combinations designed to naturally boost the immune system, using
ingredients like orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, which are rich in vitamin A.

The current product line-up of Eat Smart includes Yellowcorn and Carrot
Powder, Oatie Veggies Powder, and Sweet Potato and Veggies Powder. All Eat
Smart powder mixes can be cooked as porridge in just a few minutes by mixing
with milk or water and boiling. They can also serve as a nutritional
addition in recipes for pancakes, cupcakes, and other dishes. The raw
materials are sourced directly from farmers in northern Ghana.

Osei-Bonsu identifies the yellow corn product as the best seller, so much
so that competitors have tried to replicate the company’s recipe and even
its product names. These rivals rely on the recognisability of Eat Smart’s
product names to attract customers, and then compete on pricing by using
cheaper packaging instead of the eco-friendly cardboard boxes that Eat Smart
employs.

The company hopes that the Ghana Food and Drugs Authority will address its
concerns about product duplication, but it is also proactively rethinking
its strategy for the future.

To keep differentiating what she offers to the market, Osei-Bonsu is
preparing to launch a range of Eat Smart instant meals. It is a necessary
next step, she says, to compete with the multinational importers and to meet
a growing need for even more convenience from its clientele. “Our customers
want something that they can add to their children’s lunchboxes. Hopefully,
by early next year, we should be launching these.”

Tailored marketing

Osei-Bonsu acknowledges the importance of tailoring marketing strategies
for different market segments. For low-income groups, the approach of
advocacy and networks built up with hospitals and mother centres has proven
effective.

Middle- and higher-income mothers can be found on social media, and the
company ensures that it shares high-quality content regularly, notes
Osei-Bonsu. “This latter group also has mobile phones, and we share our
recipes on our WhatsApp groups. We allow them to order on WhatsApp and
arrange for delivery on the same day.” These recipes demonstrate how to use
the powder for dishes like pancakes and swallows (solid porridge pieces
known as banku in Ghana).

The company has amassed over 38,000 followers across its various social
media platforms, and in total, another 7,000 women on 23 WhatsApp groups.
This customer base has facilitated a steady increase in sales, to the extent
that between January and March 2023, the company produced and sold 3,000
boxes of each of its three products.

Overcoming expansion challenges and planning for growth

Finding the right skills to diversify the product range poses a challenge.
Moving into the instant food space will require Eat Smart to acquire key
personnel in areas such as quality assurance, and appointing the appropriate
human capital will be crucial to success. “It is not easy to find and retain
these skills,” she says.

Unfair competition practices pose another obstacle. “It takes a lot of
time, when you are in manufacturing, to perfect the process and then obtain
approvals from the authorities for new products. By the time you are ready,
people are already producing similar ones – they were waiting for you to
innovate.”

For the most part, the company has expanded using funding from its own
operations. In 2022, it was able to relocate to a larger manufacturing
facility. While the focus remains on Ghana, Osei-Bonsu believes that there
could be a regional market for the company’s products, for which it would
need substantial funds. It is considering taking on equity partners in the
future.

Vera Osei-Bonsu

- Howwemadeitinafrica

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