How To Start A Bread Baking Business With N50,000 From Your Kitchen

How To Get Your Bread And Business
Registered By NAFDAC
How To Stand Out In The Market Place And
Have Orders Pouring In
Challenges Of The Business You Must Know
Before Starting And How To Overcome Them
“The basic ingredients in any “Agege Bread” is
flour, yeast, salt, and sugar, but this is not the
kind of bread we are talking about, we are
talking about baking improved special bread with
other ingredients that will help you produce food
that is nutritious, which means you will need
things like butter, or fat and oil, improver, and
other specific ingredients that make your bread
to taste great and to stand out over others in
the market place.” - Henry Omenogor
If a statistic of foods frequently eaten across the
country is taken, bread will certainly rank in the
first three. Everyone, children and adults,
irrespective of tribe and religion eats bread and
they enjoy it. In fact, most people eat bread at
least once in a week.
By our projection at SD, the rate at which bread
is consumed, and the huge population of people
that eat it, in the range of millions, makes bread
baking business profitable if the baker knows
what they are doing.


This was corroborated by Henry Omenogor, an
Internet entrepreneur turned bread baker with
two years experience running a successful bread
baking business in Ghana and Nigeria.
The sweet part of this business is that he does
it right from his kitchen, which he calls micro
baking. With a small budget of N50,000, Henry
reveals in an interview he granted SD recently,
how you can start your own bread making
business and grow from there. He also discloses
how to make your bread unique so that it can
stand out in the market place and attract lots of
customers.
Read on to get all the juicy information he
reveals about making this business idea make
good money for you.
What is baking all about and what do I need to
start?
Generally, it is about turning flour and other
ingredients into a particular product, it could be
bread, biscuit, cake, or meat pie, it could be
anything. And the truth about baking is that
whatever kind of baking you want to face, it’s
food that people consume. People eat food
everyday in every community in the whole world.
That is why baking products are needed in any
community you find yourself.
Whether in the village, in the city, or even in the
cave, baking products are in hot demand.
Let me say that I am on a subtle revolution and I
am going to explain some things about baking.
Nigerian graduates and undergraduates for
example do not need to always be looking for
work. it’s ok if you want to work and you find a
job so that you are able to save up income to
start your own business. Formerly, if you walked
into a bakery you would see a business that was
set up in a three bedroom flat apartment with a
very big oven, the bigger the place is the bigger
your bakery was perceived. But today, in the
21th century, baking has changed!
Now, all you need to start a bakery is your
kitchen and baking pans, and a shop. That’s all,
and you can bake bread conveniently for people
to eat. That’s what we call micro bakery. What
am saying in essence is that you don’t need
large space to start a bakery business.
Let us assume you have a store for the baking,
the next thing you need is capital. When I talk of
capital here, I’m not talking about money; I’m
talking about your skill. Most people make the
mistake of saying, “I don’t have money and that
is why I am not in business, or that is why the
business is not growing”. The skill is very
important; it is the skill that will meet with
opportunity.
Baking skill is the very first thing to have. You
need to learn the trade - learn how to bake. You
may say, “Don’t you need money to learn how to
bake?” Yes you may need money to do that, but
don’t forget that money is not everything. It is
also possible to acquire the needed training
without paying for it.
You could approach a baker, that is, you visit a
bakery close by, ask that you want to work for
them for free even if they didn’t advertize that
they needed workers - offer your service for free
to get the baking knowledge that you need.
The second thing is that you don’t think about
the money to start the business because the law
of attraction will just play out itself. Once you
have learnt the skill, the money will also come.
But if we have to even put a figure on it, you
may not even need up to N90, 000 to start a
bread baking business.
The basic ingredients in any Agege bread is flour,
yeast, salt, and sugar, but this is not the kind of
bread we are talking about, we are talking about
baking improved special bread with other
ingredients that will help you produce food that
is nutritious, which means you will need things
like butter, or fat and oil, improver, and other
specific ingredients that make your bread to
taste great and to stand out over others in the
market place.
Types of bread
We have three types of bread; the first is the
Agege bread. The Agege bread is the type you
see almost everywhere without label. Even if it
was produced in Mushin area of Lagos State it
will still be called Agege Bread. It has less or no
nutritional value; people can easily afford it
because it is cheap.
The second type is the Special bread, which has
more nutritional value and sold at affordable
price. It contains ingredients like milk,
sometimes fruits, and jam to make it very rich to
eat.
The third type is called the Lifestyle bread or
wheat bread. This type is usually very expensive
for low income earners to afford. It is therefore
mainly for the higher class people.
As a baker, you can specialize on any of the
three types. However, for the sake of quality,
and if you are concerned about running a
business that you are proud to introduce to your
friends, you should go for bread that has food
value and not just any kind of bread.
Starting your bread production without owning
an oven
Once you have the skill and you are able to buy
the ingredients to make the bread, you don’t
even need to wait till you get the oven; you can
bake your bread without having your own oven.
This is a discovery that most people don’t even
know about. If the entire budget you have is
about N40-N50, 000, I tell you, you can do this
business. Oven cannot be your challenge for
starting, there are basic secret methods, and I
mean proven methods that you can apply to
bake without having your own oven.
If I don’t need an oven to start bread baking
business, how then do I get the oven that bakes
the bread?
You can actually rent an oven from established
bakeries. Some of them will be glad to rent it to
you at the time they are not using it for their
own production. You will negotiate with them on
the fees to pay.
For people who have the money to buy their own
oven when starting a micro bread baking
business factory, the kind of oven you will need
to produce bread from one bag of flour a day
will cost about N50, 000, even with N30, 000,
you can get a locally produced oven that can
work efficiently. I recommend locally fabricated
ovens because I am a proponent of indigenous
products.
They are fabricated here in Nigeria, they are
everywhere, you can walk into any factory where
they fabricate ovens, tell them your standard,
and give them the shape of your pan and they
will produce the oven to suit your pan, this is the
unique thing about indigenous fabricators, they
will build your oven according to the shape of
your pan, you don’t have to start struggling with
pan fitting into the oven.
Don’t forget we are talking about being unique, if
you have a long pan and the oven you have is
not able to accommodate the pan, it will amount
to fruitlessness.
How much can you make baking one bag of
flour?
It will cost about N11, 000 to bake one bag of
flour and you will be making N22, 000 from the
sales of that one bag. With strong marketing
strategy, if you succeed in baking 2 bags a day
and sell all the loaves you have made, you will
eventually be making N22, 000 a day.
But to be frank with you, you may not get this
N22, 000 the very first day you come to the
market because people don’t know you yet. You
will first have to warm your way to consumers’
hearts before they will start buying from you.
How did you go about marketing your bread at
the start?
Let me share with you what I did. When I have
done all I needed to do in terms of informing
those close to me of my intention to produce
bread and to be on the lookout for my bread,
after I did my first production, I gave out most
of the bread as samples for people to taste and
note the quality.
With the rejection of starting something new and
people telling me that I can’t do bread business
the way I have planned to do it, that it will not
sell, that people will not buy such bread, I still
went ahead to produce it, but I didn’t start
selling immediately, I gave out almost all the
bread that I produced as sample for people to
taste.
That was what I did and you too can do the
same. I tell people “You can sell anything if you
are not selfish”. You must allow the people to
confirm what you are introducing to the market.
If you are marketing other people’s products that
have been in the market for a while, it would be
a different thing compare to a new product that
you called Special, because bread is everywhere.
Why will I dump the one I’m used to buying for
yours that is just new in the market?
If you make provision for sample taste and you
keep to the quality they have tasted, they will
start to bombard you with calls of orders.
Calls will start to come for you to supply. Now
this is what you can also do to really capture the
market in your area. When you go for supply,
don’t go because you want to just sell and get
your money, think of building a business
relationship with the clients that will even last
more than your own life span. So, don’t look at
the business for the now, look at the future.
The challenge with some people that start
business or even this bread business is that they
produce to start selling and once people refuse
to buy their bread, they will get discouraged, and
before you know it they have folded up the
business. You don’t need to stop the business;
you can ask questions on how to improve on
your product. Know that you are not the one
consuming the bread, what the consumer wants
is what you have to produce.
In marketing, when you are prospecting to a
customer, the first thing you need to do is to
give him your own product to taste, and when
he’s done you are to listen to his criticisms,
allow him to tell you what he feels about the
product and do not feel bad if he tells you any
negative thing. If you say that because your
product has been rejected, you are going to close
the business, then you don’t have any business
doing business.
So, the first thing you need to do is to go to the
market place and identify within your community
what they want. Some people like the Agege type
of bread, while others like the special kind of
bread and some still like the porch kind of bread.
It is then up to you to produce what you want to
sell once you have identify the customers you
want to sell to - produce your product according
to the choice of those customers.
Now, let me tell you a secret. A time is coming
when people will start to produce bread for
diabetic patients, bread strictly for elderly people
who are very choosy about what they eat, I tell
you, if you focus only on that, believe me you
can make a lot of money.
Another thing to bear in mind in marketing this
special bread is that you have to be unique. You
don’t pick a product that is already in the market
and say you want to product exactly like that
product, no, you must be very unique, your taste
must be unique, your shape must be unique,
your design must be unique, and your marketing
style must be unique. If you can do all of these,
you are sure to take part in the share of the
market.
How do I get the bread registered and the
business licensed by NAFDAC?
NAFDAC is not against bread baking if you know
what you are doing, NAFDAC is actually
encouraging people to go into small scale
business, it’s just that Nigerians are too fearful
when it comes to issues like this, even when you
have started baking and you push it into the
market, it is not a problem, what NAFDAC will do
is to pick up your product and ask you to
register the product, they won’t arrest you
because they don’t want to discourage you, but
if you are producing fake products, that becomes
an issue.
Please note that we are not talking about
producing fake bread here, we are talking about
producing good quality special bread that nobody
will want to resist when they bite it. NAFDAC is
only saying do your things right.
The issue is this, start a business first, but if you
are scared of starting then fear will actually
cripple your business. The fear of starting has
actually killed a lot of business ideas. Personally,
I failed when I was starting out because I was
trying to follow other people’s recipe. I was
trying to be like the person who taught me, and I
failed until I decided to do it on my own, that
was when I got it right.
There is what is called fail forward, when you
start any business you must fail forward. How?
You will start learning as you are failing and this
is what makes you to become an expert, for
bread business in Nigeria, it is a very lucrative
business.
How lucrative is bread business?
Most people don’t have business doing business
in Lagos to be honest. What they should be
doing is to learn how to make bread, do it for a
period of time, relocate back to their village or to
a new settlement where the people still depend
on bread from the city, or where the demand for
bread is higher and start their bakery business.
and the beauty of this business is that your
children will just learn automatically from you
and it becomes a trans generational business.
How do you go about mixing the ingredients,
doesn’t your mixture determine the quality you
produce?
The mixing is called kneading. You don’t need
sophisticated tools or equipment to do your
kneading, we are talking of a micro bread
production , you can do a manual mixing in a big
bowl, you can do half or one bag, you can use
the normal flour mixer that is everywhere or
hand mixer.
Don’t forget, the bread you are producing is also
called artisan bread because you are using
natural things. In the absence of a milling
machine which most of the big-time bakers have,
there are other alternatives, some of which I
have already mentioned.
What have been your major challenges and how
have you been able to overcome them?
The very first challenge I had when I wanted to
start was people telling me that I can’t put the
ingredient I want to put in my own kind of bread
either they are ignorant of it or they think I
cannot make my money out of it, but I insisted I
was going to produce something that can be
eaten as food and not just any kind of bread,
with all the good things that makes a good meal
in bread.
Mine was not just to do business for now, but
for the future and I’m trying to sell a name, the
name of my bread is called VIP, which stands for
very important person, that is branding for me,
because when I came into the country to
establish this bread business, all I was seeing in
my neighborhood was the same Agege bread and
each time I go to supply, they keep telling me
what my bread is not and what I should make it
to be, until I was able to convince them to taste
it, then sell it, today that bread has gained
acceptance in my area.
Another issue is how do I start this new idea in
this dangerous terrain? People say that once you
bring a new business or novel business idea into
the Nigerian market they will kill it. That’s
rubbish, I heard it, people told me all of that, but
I never mind them. So if you don’t know exactly
why you are in business, or why you want to set
up a particular business, you will be deceived by
that lie of the devil, so watch it.
Now, I should sound this warning, note that not
everybody will like your bread. Once you produce,
you will begin to hear different advice. Some will
tell you, “We want more sugar”, and they will be
telling you different things to do, so much that if
you are not focused on what you are doing you
will soon be frustrated out of the market.
Another thing is in the marketing of the product.
Most of the people when I started out bought
my bread on credit and did not eventually pay
for it. I started out targeting the very low income
earners as customers. This people, after they
have been satisfied with the quality of my bread
will buy the bread and tell me they will pay later,
but some didn’t pay eventually.
But this was part of the price and lesson I had
to pay for what I wanted to do. I use a formula
that is called inverse paranoid to handle the
criticisms that I get. A paranoid is someone who
believes that whatever criticism or rejection that
he gets from the market place is meant to
cripple him and the business, but inverse
paranoid is someone who believes that the
criticism and rejection from the market place is
just a booster to keep doing what he knows best
until the market accepts what he has to offer.
I was never bordered about the negative things I
got from the market, it was just a push for me, I
was never down, it gave me the belief that it is
part of what God has arranged for me to do, to
push me further up. So, if you want to run a
business of this nature or any other type of
business, you must become an inverse paranoid,
that is the only way to stay focused on the
major goal.
You are going to be rejected; you are going to be
mocked, even by members of your family,
friends, and colleague. Some will wonder why
you have to leave what you were doing before to
bread baking. They will think you have lost your
senses, that you are not focused, but as long as
you have a goal, a dream you can die for, it is
just a matter of time, they will come and
celebrate with you.
And until you have a dream you are ready to die
for, you are not worth living.
Now, the story has changed, I get some calls at
midnight placing for orders, and that is when I
tell myself, yes, you have gotten there, you
cannot be rejected again.
With the hundreds or even thousands of bread
that are produced in Nigeria, why should I start
another bread baking business?
There are two types of people producing bread,
the literate and the illiterate. The illiterate are not
ready to change from the way they know how to
produce bread 25years ago. They believe it just
has to remain like that without any kind of
improvement. They are the ones that will tell you
never to add milk, and don’t add ascorbic acid to
bread production.
And you know, the recipe of bread is based on
the information you have and practice. Everyone
of us has tasted the different types of Egusi
soup our mothers cooked for us. You cannot tell
me that my mother’s way of cooking Egusi will
be the same way your own mother will cook it.
It’s the same Egusi, but there must be different
ingredients added and different approaches.
But the mother who does not know how to cook
will never border to open a restaurant because
nobody will buy from her. If your bread is unique
it will stand out in the market place even if there
are already one thousand different bread
products there.
For instance, what makes my bread different is
this: I do breaded bread; this is our most sold
bread because the look is unique. I do Ghana
rolls; the rolls are very profitable more than any
other type of bread. This breaded bread is
actually called Challah, then I do banquet, French
bread, the long type of bread that is seen in very
few areas around the country.
We have to do this French bread more because
we discovered that the moment people saw it
they remembered how they had eaten it a long
time ago and later didn’t see it again. We tell
them we have brought it back to the market.
These also make our line of bread unique in the
market. In fact, till date, I still research on daily
basis for fresh and best bread I should give out.
Most people don’t know that there is sugar
bread, butter bread, all they know is just the
shape to say it is bread, but we do all of these
bread, I have done jam bread and its very sweet,
but the shelf life is very short, so we don’t do it
on regular basis unless by order. I also do the
popular Ghana bread, which can last for up to
8days, we can also make some of our bread
without preservatives, using natural ingredients,
like the French rolls, which can even last longer
than 10days, but we add some preservatives to
the others.