‘We’ll fight for our fair share of Nigeria’s culinary market’
By What informed your decision to play in this market segment?
There is a lot of personal sentiments. I have done a few businesses in Nigeria. I used to visit Ilupeju, here and would always find a situation where I couldn’t get good food. When I talk about good food, I mean food that gives value for the customers’ hard-earned funds. For instance, I come from India. And. in India, food is not a problem. You walk on the streets, and what you see are options, options and options. Moreover, India has shown that there is a potential for growth in the food industry. Generally, people want to try different things. So when I saw that there was not enough to experiment with, here, I felt I needed to do something about it. Secondly, as a business, I believe that since the coming of this latest democracy, in 1999, there is a lot of exposure among Nigerians. Nigerians travel all over the world. They are being exposed to different kinds of food, in Dubai and other countries of the world. You can get real good food and at a cheaper price. But, unfortunately, that is not the case, here. That is why I felt the timing is now for us to engage in similar business. That is to enhance Nigerians’ food experience. So we felt this is a business that has potential. And, given a choice, Nigerians will keep venturing, keep trying all different kinds of food. As you can see ten to fifteen years back, Chinese food was something that Nigerians accepted. But today, the fast food culture has taken over. People have less time to do all these household chores now, including cooking; since they spend more time in traffic. So the intention is to make food an easy option for Nigerians. And since we started, the response has been encouraging. We’ve received a lot of positive response from Nigerians. Nigerians are definitely interested in trying all cuisines.
Any prior experience of the venture?
No, this is my first venture. And that is why it has taken us time to get it right. We’ve had this place since November 2017, it took me a year plus to start the place. If you ask me what the experience is like, the environment is high, it’s not easy, but I believe things are changing in Nigeria, and very fast too.
What would you say is the company’s mission in the nation’s culinary market?
The mission is to launch different brands of pizzas. Our first brand that we launched is Pizza King, and at the moment, we are doing different kinds of Pizzas. We have nine varieties presently. Our aim is to compete with some of the multi-nationals and other companies that we believe are coming in, soon. And we are ready to fight for our fair share of the market, through constant innovation and being different from the rest.
But what are the unique selling points of the new outfit that you think will lure many Nigerians, already accustomed to patronizing the established brands in the market, to your side?
What makes us different from other brands is that we are picking more of fresh materials. We adhere strictly to the expiry dates of our products. We are trying to come out with other interesting variants of pizzas. For instance, the Butter Chicken Pizza, which is very popular now. Besides, since we started, Nigerians like the taste. We’ve also received a lot of positive response from the market that our pizzas are better. The other brand that we have launched is MamaMia, ‘make I chop again’. The concept behind this is rice meals. We believe Nigerians love rice, Indians love rice, most people love rice. So we wanted to come out with basic meal that people can find very easy to eat. We have Jollof Rice and Suya Combo, we have Jollof Rice and Pepperi Chicken Combo, we have Chinese fried Rice as well. All these are unique offerings, coming from our stable, and which we believe Nigerians will find interesting.
What are the growth plans like?
In terms of growth, we want to add more variants to our pizzas. We want to expand our varieties of smoothies, and also plan to introduce Indonesian curry. So, the concept is to bring a lot of the world’s most favourite foods, under one brand, which is Mama Mia. We have not yet launched our bakery. It will be launched soon. We also want to bring high quality bread into the market, everything that is available elsewhere in the world, we hope to bring that under our group of Brands. In the future, we also want to do other brands. We will look at stand-alone restaurants. These two brands that we have- Pizza King and Mama Mia, we hope to launch very soon in VI and Ajah, in Lagos. Those are the areas that we plan to be next. So that’s what Culinary Delight, as a company, stands for. Our model of business, is not a conventional restaurant, it’s more of a quick service where you can wait for a few minutes, and your food will be ready. You can call ahead, you can have your food picked up or delivered to you. If we do move to Ajah or VI, we will also do delivery in those places. Since we started, we’ve been inundated with phone calls and requests to have a presence in those areas. We chose the present location, Ilupeju, because of logistics. Our prices are also reasonable, cheaper than our competition. In rice meals, we are competitive. So we’ve started, and we aim to grow. We aim to win the hearts of the Nigerian consumers, with our variations, with our brands, and let’s see how it goes.
But, how competitive are your prices?
Very competitive, and it’s obvious. Talking of pizzas, our sizes are slightly bigger and at the same time, cheaper. Along with that, we have an in-house promo, where we are giving another 50ml cup of ice cream and a drink free. So if you look at the net cost to our consumers, I don’t think anybody else is offering what we are offering. Are we ready to sustain that? Yes. We will keep offering value-based proposition to our consumers, because our aim is to be here for a long time. I believe we are still in the vicinity of 8 to 15 percent 0 cheaper than some other brands.
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