How To Start Frozen Food Business in Nigeria: Ice Fish, Cold Room Business Guide
Frozen food business is becoming more profitable day by day in Nigeria. The rate at which it’s demanded has geometrically increased. Fresh food is readily available at the village but in the cities, it’s not the case. People are only left with no option other than to eat frozen foods in the cities.
In this article, I’ll show you step by step how you can start a frozen food business in Nigeria and become successful. Thus, by drawing an effective plan and getting a good location for the business, making cool and consistent money is guaranteed.
The following are the basic steps for starting a frozen food business in Nigeria:
- Have an adequate plan for the business
- Choose a marketable product
- Find a promising business location
- Build a strong storage system
- Acquire the needed equipment
- Get insured or licensed for the frozen food business
- Offer delivery services
- Overcome the common challenges faced in a frozen food business
- Build a customer base for your business
Have an Adequate Plan for the Business
When we talk about planning adequately for a business, it simply means seeking specialist advice on the right things to do and what to put in place prior to starting.
There are a lot of frozen food business consultants online that are willing to give you the right orientation about the business from their own expertise and pool of experience for a token charge. They offer services like these on their personal websites and blogs. You can hire them for such services. All these efforts will make it feasible that you’re starting the business in a great way.
Choose a Marketable Product
The frozen foods are location-based products. So, to make the most out of these products, you must study your location to see what is trending in the frozen food market.
In most markets, the most known frozen foods are frozen turkeys, chickens, and seafood. If your location will warrant that you specialize in selling seafood, don’t hesitate to venture into that. And if your location would be excellent for frozen chickens and turkeys, then go for that too.
Though there are so many frozen foods in markets that are not mentioned above, a good business plan will be a pointer to you on what to deal in that will earn you profits.
Find a Promising Business Location
Before you choose a business location at all, you need to find out your target market first. Once you’ve known that, you can easily decide on the most suitable location for your business.
One other thing you need to target when choosing a location for your business is stable electricity. This is the greatest factor that determines if you’re going to become successful in the business or not. Running a frozen food business in a location where electricity is not stable can lead to failure.
So, make sure you make your findings properly before choosing your business location lest you find yourself in the problem of incurring so much cost on fuel. If you’re in a location where you have to spend a lot of money on fueling the generating plant, then you’re not going to make any reasonable profit at all.
Build a Strong Storage System
This is another vital step to take when setting up a promising frozen food business. If you’re dealing in seafood, frozen turkey and chickens, you must prepare to get separate refrigerators for the different products as customers will not patronize you anymore once they find out that you keep these products in the same refrigerator.
With these products kept in the same refrigerator, the scents and taste will be mixed up and potential customers will run away from this. Because they wouldn’t ever want to buy from you anymore, they will keep telling other customers not to patronize you. Eventually, you’ll lose the potential customers and the business may fold up.
Acquire the Needed Equipment
To start up the frozen food business properly, you’ll need the following equipment:
- Freezer
- Air conditioners
- Knives
- Capital
- Waste bin
- Table
- Wooden boards
- Chairs
- Buckets
- Chisel
- Aprons
- Generating plant
- Sales representatives
- Workspace
- Food in cartons
To get all these equipment, do some market findings and prepare to buy them one after the other.
Get Insured or Licensed for the Frozen Food Business
Why it is necessary to get a practicing license and insurance coverage is that there might be some regulations governing the affairs of the frozen food business owners. If you wouldn’t care to find out about these regulations prior to starting up the business, you might find yourself being harassed by the union or association.
Getting insured will ensure that even if you make some losses due to any reason, you’ll still be covered by the insurance terms. And aside from that, getting insured may help protect your business from those who might want to embarrass you on any of your frozen products.
Offer Delivery Services
Because there may be some potential customers who might be willing to have their own frozen products delivered to them at a cost, it becomes necessary for you to get a delivery van which will really help your business skyrocket on time.
Overcome the Common Challenges in a Frozen Food Business
As it’s common to find some certain challenges in all businesses, the frozen food business too has its own challenge which is the inadequate supply of electricity. This is the problem we’re currently facing in Nigeria with electricity supply.
To overcome the challenge of electricity, the only thing you can do is to make sure you establish your business where power supply is at least okay for the business as suggested earlier in this article. This will help you reduce the extent of the cost you will always incur on fueling your generating plant.
Build Your Customer Base for the Business
The best way to build your customer base is to sell at discounted (More affordable) prices compared to what other frozen food sellers are currently selling. This is what works best when it comes to finding and attracting a lot of potential customers.
