On Tuesday, June 22nd, Mojisola Ogunsanya crossed a milestone that was worth celebrating. Her restaurant, Belefull Variety turned five. A milestone worth celebrating because many businesses have closed down due to the failing economy and hard times being experienced in the country. “It was a day of cheers, good food and good music as friends and customers came together to celebrate their favourite food hub.
In this interview, she shares her experiences in the food industry.
How has it been for your food business in this economic climate of Nigeria these five years?
We restauranters are not making money. We are not even making a profit. It is really bad. Our customers don’t want to understand when customers come today and we tell them chicken is N500, if they come tomorrow and we tell them it is N600, they will not want to understand but the truth is that is how we buy it in the market, today you get there and it is now N22,000, you get tomorrow and it is now N25,000.
So how have you been surviving?
It is just God’s grace. This morning I woke up and said to myself that these five years it’s been a lot of struggle, hard work and perseverance because if you don’t have passion for what you do, you will give up, it is not easy. A lot of people believe that restaurants make a 100% profit margin, which is very false. I can say that restaurants make the lowest margin profit, the only thing is that it is the turnover that works for us. Especially for quick-service restaurants, which is what we do. Whatever you are doing in Nigeria, running a business is very very draining, our government does not support us in any way and the government also does not acknowledge the fact that SMEs create about 60% or more than 60% of the jobs that we have in Nigeria. I have about 25 staff members. I said to myself even if I have not achieved much, the fact that I know that I have created jobs in the last five years is enough for me. Some people work for us and get paid, indirectly they can take care of their families, so it is enough for me.
Have you explored other options?
No, it’s just quick service and we do outdoor catering.
Last year when there was a lockdown, was your restaurant functioning in any way at all?
We started to do bulk orders and deliver to people at home. Even though people were not going out, restaurants were allowed to work after one month or so. We were not even open so we used to work just from the kitchen, we delivered to people. When they allowed us to open, people would just come in and buy takeaways until later.
How do you see the future of Belefull?
Hopefully, if Nigeria is still in one place, a lot of restaurants that are still doing very well don’t have restaurants spread across and the reason for that is management. It takes a lot to manage a business. It takes a lot to manage a restaurant. The food business is a serious business so you can’t have multiple branches and you are managing this one and that one. There are lots of things to put into consideration. There is quality control, even if you have staff, they will still spoil everything for you. I would like to have a few maybe five, four but once you start having 10 or 15, it becomes too much of a problem and you begin to lose the quality of the food, your brand and everything together. You mustn’t get to that point. Five years from now, we hope and pray to God that we will still be around, be relevant even more than we are now, to branch out to a few other places where we can allow the people there experience what we do.
How do you define success in this business?
In the food industry, I believe that if you have a restaurant that has been running for a long time and you are still there, there are a lot of restaurants that have lost it along the way but there are also some people that have been consistent for a long time. It is not about the amount of money that you make or the number of branches that you have but if you are consistent, I feel like yeah…that’s success for me in the food industry. But in life generally, success to me is that I have people that depend on me, they come to work every day and we have been doing this for five years, I have been paying salaries, way more than five years because I have been doing business all my life since I came out of school.
In this food business, a lot of people think it is very lucrative, so a lot of people rush into the business and some people are still in business like what you said, people complain about their quality after a while. Do you think the food business is something that can pull people out of poverty in Nigeria?
I don’t think it should be a food business. I feel it should be any business that you do passionately. A lot of people believe that the food business is very lucrative but I feel that a typical restaurant’s margin is about 10-15 per cent, that’s what the profit margin is because there is a lot of costs. For example, our cost of production now is about 70 per cent, that’s because of the crazy increase in food prices. For example, you sell a plate of rice for N1000, it means you used N700 to produce it so you have N300 left, you have to pay bills like NEPA, salaries, you have to buy diesel. Our business is not the type that people will buy a bag. Some people buy bags and shoes for N5000 and when they come to Nigeria, they sell it for N20,000, we don’t get that kind of profit margin but the turnover, the fact that you open every day and you know that you are selling every day and you know that whatever it is that you have left, you know that it is consistent, that’s the same thing that works for restaurants and people should not go into business because they are seeing it from the outside and they believe that those people must be making a lot of money, and they just go into it. A lot goes into running a business and if you are not passionate about it, I had a salon one time, I set it up with a lot of money. I went to China bought all the salon equipment, I don’t know how to make hair, I closed down the salon much after. I mean I tried to make it work. At a time I went to meet one stylist to train me and because it wasn’t just in me to make hair, I didn’t succeed in that business. So you will struggle if you are not passionate about it and you will give up which was what I did. But for this kind of business, because this is what I do, I enjoy doing cooking. It is something that comes to me easily and because of the passion I have for it, I just continue.
What has been the failures and challenges in the past five years and how have you been able to deal with them?
In business, I don’t think you can get to a point where you can say that you have gotten it right, you are learning every day because sometimes some things just happen and you are like…I thought I knew this, you are learning every day. We fail, we pick ourselves up, we learn from it and then we get better from that failure. The challenge I will still say is the staff. Getting people that can buy into your vision and align with it is very difficult, a lot of people work maybe because they want to steal, other people work because they just need to earn money. The fact that you tell somebody the same thing over and over again and I am like…why are you like this? And again recently the cost of foodstuff.
What has been the important milestones in this business?
First of all, the fact that we are five years, I didn’t want to make it a big deal before not until last month but I said to myself if you have a business that is standing in Nigeria for five years, you should celebrate yourself because it is so much of a big deal. The fact that we are here is by God’s grace and the fact that our customers have also kept us here is a good thing for us.
How does Bellefull intend to gain authority in this industry?
I think it is basically about staying true to yourself, staying true to what you believe in, staying true to your goals, staying true to your vision for the business. What people look for when they want to eat – people look for good food and that good food is what speaks for you, the fact that someone says I have been eating Jollof rice at Bellefull for the past five years is a testament that we are good. As long as you are consistent with whatever it is that you do, food or other industries, you will be able to compete with a lot of people that have been there before you. Also, you just have to keep pushing yourself. Don’t limit yourself, go out of your comfort zone.
For me, I am a risk-taker. There is nothing that scares me especially when it comes to business because I have the mindset that it is only two things that can happen- it is either I succeed or I fail and I don’t see failing as so much of a big deal because it is a learning curve for me. For everything that I fail at, I look at it as an opportunity to learn from it, to get better.
What should your customers expect as you mark your fifth anniversary, what are you giving to your customers as you are marking your five years?
We have a lot of goodies for our customers, Malta Guinness supported us for this anniversary, they gave us free drinks for our customers, souvenirs as well and we have cakes, we have a raffle draw and it has been on for two or three weeks now. Somebody is going home with a cooker, another person is going home with a fridge and a microwave. This is us saying to our customers that we appreciate them, thanking them for coming this far with us because without them we wouldn’t be here. In the next five years, it is a brand new car that we want to give them.
Do you do any CSR?
We have a foundation called Bellefull Foundation. We give food to 100 less privileged people every month. So this weekend we will be going to Agege, Beggar’s Village so that’s our only little way of giving because we believe that everybody deserves a good meal. So even if it is just once a week or once a month, we can put that smile on their faces.
What do you do when you are not working?
Most of the time I am working. Most of the time I don’t have time because the restaurant business is a full-time business. I relax sometimes, I just watch Netflix to take away the pressure. I said to myself that this year, I have to take out one day in a month to just go somewhere to cool down my head, by myself, switch off my phone but somewhere outside the work environment where I can just focus on other things or just try to think of other things besides work because it is a full-time business and if you are not careful, you will break down. You will just keep giving so you have to be deliberate about your time for yourself.
What has been your favourite customer experiences?
What is the least?
I don’t have one, they are many. I can’t say but I know that we’ve had unpleasant experiences. We have different customers – we have patient customers, customers that are not so patient, customers that are demanding and at the end of the day, we are here to please our customers no matter what they bring to us. Sometimes, the experiences that they have are because of how staff dealt with them so we have had different issues. Running a restaurant is no easy work. There was this customer that came in recently. I don’t know what transpired between him and the staff and the next thing, the food that was served him, he took it and threw it at the chiller and broke the plate. He was very angry and we just had to calm him down but it was one of the staff that triggered his response and we had to calm him down, I think that should be it.
In these five years, has there been a point when you felt like giving up?
No…not for this particular business, for other businesses I don’t run them anymore which is again why you have to be passionate. The only thing that keeps me going is that this is something that I know that I want to do for a long time and hopefully, pass to my kids. There has never been any time that I thought of giving up on this business. I just get frustrated with the whole system like every other Nigerian.
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