Have you ever thought about starting running your own bakery business in Nigeria?
There are so many businesses you can run in Nigeria to be gainfully self-employed, and it is no doubt one of them.

Now, when people hear of baking, they think of bread most of the times.

While breads are the most popular bakery products, other ones like cakes, biscuits, cookies, doughnuts, buns, and chin-chins can even be much more profitable depending on the scale.

By scale, I mean the quantity of products you circulate from your factory everyday.

Someone who produces chin-chins in large scale like the Minimie Chin Chin cannot be used to compare to a bread baker serving only a medium populated city.

You'd have been thinking of baking as a multi-million Naira business, but of course it is worth some millions of stress... Lol!

Basically, baking is not for lazy people and of course, people who don't want to stain their skins.

Introduction to baking:-

A bakery is an establishment that produces and sells flour-based food products baked in an oven.

Some of these foods include cakes, pastries, bread, cookies, doughnuts, chin chins and pies.

Baking is a method of preparing foods using dry heat and normally in an oven. It can also be done in hot ashes, or on hot stones.

So putting them together, a bakery is a place where baking is done.

Some of the food items that are produced in a bakery include:-

• Cakes
• Bread
• Chin chins
• Doughnuts
• Hamburgers
• Biscuits
• Meatpies
• Sharwarma

The list is endless, and they are all lucrative in their own ways.

The demand for baked products in Nigeria is high, especially when compared to other food items.
This can be as a result of the fact that they are fast foods, and do not require further heating (except you're frying eggs or boiling water).

Now how can you start a bakery in Nigeria? How lucrative is the baking business?

We'd be seeing them in this article.

Cost Of Starting A Bakery In Nigeria

This is a rough estimate, and only to give you a hint.

Some of the equipment you need to start your bakery and their estimated costs include:-

• Flour mixer - ₦40,000+
• Baking pans - ₦10,000+
• Baking oven - ₦520,000+
• Slicing machine - ₦190,000+
• kVA generator - ₦95,000+
• Delivery vehicle - ₦1.2 million+

Total: ₦2,055,000

You'll also budget for payment of your staff, fueling of the generator and vehicle, renting of a factory is you don't have yet and buying of raw materials.

The prices of these things might be different, depending on your location and who is buying them.
The price of the flour mixer for cakes for instance might be different for the one for breads.

I sourced all the prices from Jiji.ng.

Setting Up The Bakery

After getting the required equipment, we'd be moving into setting up the bakery.
Some of the things you need to do include:

• Get a professional training

To avoid getting stuck in the middle, go for a professional training on the particular field of baking you want to dive into.

If you're going into making of cakes, some YouTube tutorials might be helpful and gradually, you learn with experiences.

If however you want to begin a bread bakery, it is best you go for a professional baker to give you the required guidelines, tips and tricks.

• Prepare your business plan

After the training, the next step is to work on your business plan.

How much are you willing to invest, and into what? How do you want to start and which strategies are you targeting?

Putting all these down will be very helpful.

• Source for finance

After getting trained and preparing a business plan, it's time to gather the funds to shoot off the business.

You can check out this article on the 7 easiest ways to raise capital for your business.

If you're considering going for a loan, these 10 websites give quick online loans to Nigerians, and their platforms are very flexible.

• Choose a location

The location you'll choose will be determined by the availability of funds.

Some people begin with flats and expand, and I have even seen people baking from their homes.

The bakery of course doesn't need to be in an estate, since 95% of your final consumers don't care about where you're baking from.

Make sure it is neat, and in a place well accessible by motors and of course, your workers.

Some people would be coming to the bakery to purchase themselves so a location with a well-accessible road is a pro.

To succeed in the bakery business in Nigeria, you need to stand out in everything from your location to the packaging of your breads.

• Build your factory

Building the factory is the next key stuff.

If you're starting a cake, chin chin, doughnut or any other bakery aside breads, you can consider using a room in your house.

The room will be for the mixing and you bake in your kitchen.

I have seen some large scale chin chin bakers making use of a small roofed shed in front of their compound.

You can even choose a small area near a road to set up your business.

Not all bakers need ovens, so you can create a factory like the ones Akara business owners use.

• Do necessary registrations

If you're starting a bread bakery or any other ones in large quantity, you will need to do a NAFDAC registration and the CAC business registration.

Stanford put a little about how to go along with doing the NAFDAC registration in this article.

If you're wanting to do your CAC business registration, also read this article.

Depending on your location, there are unions for bakers and to be on the safe side, you might need to join them.

• Begin work!

After setting up everything, it's time to begin work. The bakery business in Nigeria is very lucrative if done properly.

There are some things that are prohibited by the NAFDAC for use in breads such as saccharin and bromate, and it's safer to avoid them.

After-all if you feed your consumers poison and they die who'll continue making you money?

Make very quality and attractive packets for your products, and put even more efforts into the products itself.

Some people would go miles just to pay their money for a particular bread because its sweet.

Conclusion

Running a bakery business in Nigeria is one of the sure ways of making a living for yourself.

It is however capital intensive, and you can consider going for a loan.

Thanks a lot for reading along.

If you need help with purchasing the equipment, you can consider contacting us or dropping a comment.