On today’s edition of Business Half hour, we speak to Hamiza Raman, the founder of Coco bean bakery, a cake bakery in the Nigerian food and beverage sector. The company is involved in baking cakes for different occasions and fully monetizes the business potential by offering cakes of different flavors in slices.
Inspiration for the creation of Coco bean bakery
The founder started Coco bean after coming back from her masters abroad. The business started small during her university days when she made cakes for her friends and colleagues and she was commended for it. In her words she was told, “this is nice, people would pay good money for it”.
She made her first money from baking after a client who paid her fifty pounds for a cake, after which she started charging for her cakes, making more money and making sales while in school abroad.
But she didn’t decide to fully go into baking as a career until she came back to Nigeria and the job offers and their matching pay weren’t good enough. It was then she founded Coco bean as a proper business and kick started it by baking cakes from her mothers kitchen at her family home.
How did Coco bean grow and what is the business’s focus?
Coco bean has been in existence for seven years, but was just a hobby that didn’t transit into a full business until three years ago. Coco bean focuses on making mostly cakes, in different sizes , flavors and quantities.
The business started and is still thriving on the savings of the founder, who used savings from her part-time job while studying abroad to finance her business. With time, the profit from the business was put into the business to grow it to the point it is now.
Coco bean gets the bulk of its customers from social media- Facebook, Instagram, Twitter . One major step Coco bean took to set itself apart from other cake businesses was that she started selling cake slices during the lockdown period.
The business took off at that point because there was a lot of demand for food as people couldn’t go to the market and chefs and bakers were the only ones allowed to deliver their baked goods to homes . The company also employed a great search engine optimization (SEO) system at that time because it was the first option on google whenever cake lovers type in ‘cake slices in Lagos’ on their browser. In the words of the Founder, they had even more orders than they could handle so they had to reject some orders.
The business has grown from the constant orders of returning customers who visit the Instagram, Twitter and Facebook page of the company @cocobeanbakery, try a product, like it and want more. Coco bean cakes sell well because of their taste and quality of products as there are no added preservatives of any kind and everything is made fresh.
Challenges of running Coco bean bakery?
According to the founder, the past few months has really been a different experience for the business. Previously the costing of the cakes could be arrived at after calculating the cost of diesel and other essential things needed but now the prices have gone through the roof and she has had to invest in things like an inverter and other alternative sources of energy to power the ovens and fridges.
The founder also had to also let some staff go in order to manage costs. The company has also had to drop its gourmet style of baking and adjust its pricing to suit customers who want less pricey cakes.
Talking about the other materials needed for the bakery, the founder stated that the price of flour is now more than double the initial price it was. “In 2020 flour was N9,500 per bag now its N25,000”.
There is also the problem of logistics as the traffic in lagos makes it difficult for the cakes to get to their owners. The founder stated that the deliveries have to start as early as 4 am every morning in order to avoid traffic jams and for the quality to not go bad.
Solution to the challenges
According to Hamiza, the best solution that would help the business is constant electricity. In her words “It would save me 100,000 a week on fuel”.
Best selling product of Coco bean
The best selling product of Coco bean currently are cake slices, especially in chocolate flavor. Daily the business makes chocolate cake slices and they are all sold out.
In the words of the founder, a baker has to be really articulate and make sure the measurements of the products are consistent every single time to achieve the same taste and result to ensure customer patronage.
Plans for the future
Hamiza’s foremost plan for the future is a bigger team, more solid with more professionals so that the company can operate on a much bigger scale , delegate duties to others and not have to turn away customers.
The staff strength is just two for now and more hands would be needed. There’s also the plan for a catering school to pass the knowledge to future bakers.
Advice to aspiring bakers
In her opinion new bakers should device a plan to get your product out there, when Coco beam started out, the founder handed out free products for every order in order to get the customer to try another product different from what they ordered and they always came back.
She also says that her daily mantra for motivation was “get up and go; just wake up and get the work done”. Patience is also a good virtue in the cake business as things go wrong often.
Finally, it is also important to build trust with clients because it gets you free marketing and patronage from them if they love the product.
I can attest to its irresistible flavor🥰 I don chop am before for free😂