Bakers Choice, learning from our success story.
Bread is one of the most staple food in Nigeria. It is consumed by every household. It can be consumed in a variety of ways by combining it with other foods such as beans, ogi. tea, etc. With margarine/butter and beverage, it is always the kids’ delight. With over 200 million population, Nigeria has a very large market for bread and other baked goods. Therefore, knowing what you need to know how to run a successful bakery is a step in the right direction.
There are different types and sizes of a bakery. Therefore, knowing exactly what you want will go a long way in saving you time and energy. So we will begin by looking at the different types of bakery then move on to the other things you will need to consider.
1 Types of Bakery
Retail Bakery
Most bakery can be classified under the retail bakery category. These types of bakery produce to serve/sell to their customers directly. There are different retail bakeries you can choose to do as your preferred business. Below are some of them
- Traditional bakeries: These are bakeries that produce mainly flour-based staple types of baked goods like bread. They are more focused on meeting basic needs. Bread business can be very lucrative because you can bake different types of bread. In fact, the world of bread making is there for you to explore. You can bake coconut bread, chocolate bread, banana bread, etc.
- Home bakery: One big thing that technology has done for us is that you don’t have to have a big physical presence to make massive sales online. So starting a home bakery business from the comfort of your kitchen and selling your products online is one way you could start a bakery business because you don’t have to spend so much to acquire space or rent a facility.
- Bakery Café: Besides baked goods, these kinds of outlets offer additional things like coffee and tea. So you could set up such an outlet in a commercial environment like a campus or anywhere that your feasibility study approves of.
- Specialised Bakeries: These are bakery businesses that are centred on a specific type of baked products such as cakes. They cater for all types of cakes. One benefit of these is that over time you earn your place and become the go-to for such products/services.
- Pastry Shop: Pastry shops basically produce all kinds of snacks such as doughnut, meat pie, egg roll, puff puff, sausage roll, chicken pie etc. so depending on what your intentions are and your budget too, this could be your first step to becoming a major bakery business man or woman.
2. Commercial Bakery
These type of bakeries bake in large commercial quantity and sell to distributors who in turn sell to the final retailers/consumers. A good example is the manufacturers of the major sausage rolls brands that are sold on the streets/roads.
3. Get Registered
It is important that you register your business with the CAC. It gives you many benefits amongst which is that your business gets a corporate identity to deal with other business. Getting grants helps to expand the business but it is almost impossible if you’re are not registered. However, this does not mean you can start your business then pursue registration later.
4. With or without the registration yet, you will need the following tools or more for your baking business (depending on how “big or small” you want to start.
- Mixers
- Oven
- Dough proofer
- Bakeware
- Refrigerator
- Wood Top Work Table
- Proof boxes
- Racks and baking sheets
- Sinks
- Flour Sifters
- Trays
- Miscellaneous
5. In addition to CAC registration discussed above, you will need to be registered/licensed with the following bodies and regulatory agencies: Association of Master Bread Bakers (AMBB) in your local government area, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).
6. Hire Qualified Staff: You will need to hire and possibly retrain/reorient the staff to develop the right work culture you want your brand to be associated with or known for.
7. Ensure you make quality products: Nothing beats the voice of a good product. Therefore, ensure that you get your product right. This will help in determining the right pricing for the product(s) also.
8. Finally do good marketing for your products: There are quite a lot of ways you could market your products such as word of mouth (wom), through social media marketing, by way of sharing handbills, posters, email marketing, website, through affiliate marketing, etc.
If you found this piece useful, you can share it on your social media pages. You would also love to hear from you what other ways you know or discovered.
