Frozen food business deal with buying, storing and selling of frozen fish, chicken, turkey, and any other food that can be frozen.
Like any other food business, frozen food is very profitable though many entrepreneneur don’t know about it profitability yet which is a goog thing since the lower the supply the higher the demand and that means more money for the entrepreneur that venture into it.
If you are reading this, it means you want to go into frozen food business or have it in your plan, well whaterver is the case, I’m giving you assurance that you will make your money in this business if you will follow all the steps I will be dishing out, but before will go into the steps I want you to take note of the following:
Capital require to start frozen food business
Capital needed in this business depend on the scale you want to operate and your location, if it is small scale, you will need between #50,000 to #100,000, provided that your location is not in Laos, if it’s in Lagos, shop fee will choke your capital therefore the capital needed will be more than that.
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For medium scale #100,000 to #400,000 should cover the seed capital although it also depend on your location.
For large scale you will need more than 1 million naira and you will have to operate as a whole seller not retailer.
How frozen food business work
Frozen food business is buy, hold and sell business, it require little skill. Your job is to buy frozen food from company or directly from farmer then store in a freezer till a buyer comes around.
Skill you might need to learn is how to cut the frozen food for instance a customer might ask for cut four chicken or debone fish. You can learn this skill in a day from nearby frozen food shop or spy on them by disguising as a customer.
Equipment needed for frozen food business
Table and chairs
Generator
Knives
Bowl
Bucket
Fan/Air conditioner
Apron
Gloves
Deep freezer
Woden boards
Cabinet
Types of frozen food to sell
Fish (kote, Titus, Pannla, e.t.c)
Chicken (chicken wings, laps, gizzard, e.t.c)
Turkey (Turkey wings, laps, gizzard, e.t.c)
Shrimps
Crabs
Frozen chicken carton is between #9,000 to #15,000
Frozen fish carton is between # 4,000 to # 8,000
How profitable is frozen food business
This depend on the business model adopted, if you buy from farmer directly your income will be higher than buying imported frozen food.
Since the most available is imported frozen food we will use imported frozen chicken to calculate our income projection for a year.
Let say you buy 1 carton of 10kg of frozen chicken at #10,000 and you sell at #1,500 per kg you will have #15,000 as your revenue and #5,000 as your profit.
If you are in good location you should be able to sell at least four carton per week.
Cost of four carton = 40,000
Revenue of four carton = 60,000
Profit = 20,000 per week
Profit per month = 80,000
Profit per year = #960,000
Steps to starting frozen foods business in Nigeria
Below are the steps you need to take to have a profitable frozen food business
Feasibility study
The first thing in starting a business is feasibility study, you need to carry out research to know if your frozen business will be profitable and how profitable it will be in your proposed location, you don’t want to loose you hard earn money due to poor research.
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Go out and ask people question, know your target customer , what they need, how they’ve been tending to their need all this while and lastly check the level of competition if there is no competitor, why is that? is it that frozen business doe not thrive in that location and if there is competitor, can you cope with it?.
Business plan
It is require of you to write simple and concise business plan, especially if you will be going into large scale production. Write down your vision for the business and most importantly how you will get there in noting more than five years.
Make sure you write it well, you might want to use it to obtain investment or loan to expand your business in the future.
Register your business
For small and medium scale you might not need this but for large scale you need to register your business with appropriate authority such as NAFDAC and Corporate Affairs Commission to avoid future confrontation .
Rent a shop/ store
For small and medium scale you can rent a shop to save money, for large scale you need a large store for you frozen food. Whatever scale you are going for make sure your store is in a location with good electricity supply, it will help you reduce cost.
Stocking
There are way to regularly stock your shop
You can buy directly from farmer or purchase imported frozen food. The deference is that you will have more profit if you buy from farmer while imported frozen food guarantee regular supply.
To increase your profit in frozen business combine it with complementary product such as rice, garri , semo, e.t.c.
Marketing
If you do your feasibility study well, you won’t have problem with marketing because by now you would have know your target custormer, what they want and most importantly how to reach them.
Below are the deferent advertising medium you can use to reach your customer
Make a signpost
Brand your vehicle if you have one
Start home delivery
Radio/T.V
Create a blog with quality contents that will drive traffic to it (you can contact us for quality blog and content that will drive traffic to your frozen food website)
Make your presence known on social media.
Distribute flyers.
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Challenges of frozen food business
Irregular power supply
Irregular or no power supply is not a news in Nigeria infact it is getting worse every day, but what to do frozen business require at least 15 hours power supply if seller does not want to loose their stock.
Solution
Try to secure location with good electricity supply
Buy generator
Poor taste
The longer frozen food stay in the freezer the more its taste quality reduce.
Solution
Secure a traffic source location
Do not bite more than you can chew. Purchase what you know you can sell in a week.
Recording
You might lose the count of purchases, so find a book to record every buying and selling this will show you how much you are making or losing per month. Also when the price of frozen food go up it will help you to know what price to sell per kg.
Conclusion
Congratulation for coming up with the business idea, also for reading this short article. The next thing now is to practice what you have read here. Don’t be a wantrepreneur, get up and start your business.
See you in your shop/store.
Thank you for reading
If you have any question please do well to write it in the comment section.
