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Christine Onwuachumba
Mojisola Ogunsanya is a woman for whom business runs in her veins. Before finding her true calling, she had tried her hands at several ventures, floating various businesses, that included a cocktail business, beauty salon, souvenir shop and an event company. Today, she is the CEO of Belleful Variety, a thriving restaurant she opened recently in Ikeja, Lagos.
In this interview, she talks about how her business life took shape, among other issues.
Give a brief insight into your background
I attended Ogun State University (now Olabisi Onabanjo University), Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, where, as an undergraduate, I dabbled in buying and selling before I later proceeded to Red Dish Culinary School, where I trained as a chef. While still an undergraduate, I tried my hands at different businesses; this did not change after graduation. I ran several businesses before my love and passion for cooking led me into setting up my restaurants.
Tell us about your coming into this business
I have always been doing business, right from my university days. I have never worked for anyone. This is deliberate. I have always told my friends and family I never want to do the normal 9-5 jobs people do. I am a restless person by nature; sitting down in one place is not for me. I love business, a gift I inherited from my mother. She is late, but I would describe her as a serial entrepreneur. She would sell anything as long as it was legal. She used to go to China and other places to buy and sell and we were always begging her to slow down. I didn’t start with food when I started doing business. Food started about three years ago, when I opened my first restaurant. I have done many businesses that I didn’t succeed at. I used to have a salon, a cocktail business, a boutique and so on. I didn’t really succeed at those businesses because I didn’t have a passion for them. When I started the salon, I just wanted to have a business. I’m not a stylist, I know next to nothing about hair, but I spent a lot of money setting it up and it all went down the drain at the end of the day. My stylists would refuse to come to work and I would get stuck, as I couldn’t make hair myself. After that business failed, I told myself to go into something I enjoyed doing, which was cooking. I can cook for 24 hours non-stop. My friends and family know me for this, but still, I didn’t know how I could turn my passion into profit. I attend Daystar Church. My pastor, Sam Adeyemi, was ministering one day about the economy some four years ago. He mentioned how a lot of people were complaining about how bad the economy was and told us that despite the failing economy, a lot of people were still comfortably making money in the same economy. He told us to focus on things that people could not do without, something that we were passionate about, and stick with it. The message got to me. I took it and ran with it. I opened my first restaurant three months after listening to that message. It was almost as if the message was personally for me. People love to eat, people have to eat; give them good food and they will keep coming back for more.
A lot of people are into the restaurant business today because they feel it’s a money-spinner; what is your opinion on this?
If you come into the restaurant business with the mindset of making money alone and you lack passion, it wouldn’t spin anything for you. You will fail. Personally, I prefer to think about the best interest of my customers first and foremost. For rice meals, for instance, we use basmati rice, though this wasn’t primarily because of the health of our customers. We did this mainly because of the restrictions on rice in the country. We used to serve local rice before, but some of our customers complained about the quality of the rice as it used to have particles of sand and stones. The rice, also, was re-bagged by devious dealers. We had to keep explaining that it wasn’t our fault, and we were working with instructions from the government. We lost customers due to this. So, we decided to go with basmati rice, which is also far healthier. Basmati is quite expensive; we do not think of profit alone, but also customer satisfaction.
Why do a lot of restaurants open and fold up within a short time?
A lot of people who open restaurants don’t enjoy cooking so much and when they see the amount of work involved, it becomes a problem. Sometime ago, I had an issue with my three cooks. The first one said his sister passed away and he was travelling to bury her. The second just didn’t show up. The third was very sick and had to go home. I was in the kitchen myself for two days, cooking non-stop. Situations like that would always arise and if you’re not a cook or you don’t enjoy cooking, your business would run into problems.
Secondly, management is an issue a lot of owners overlook. You have to be on top of your business at all times. You cannot sit at home and say someone is overseeing things for you. If you do so, your business will fail. Because of the kind of business it is, which opens every day throughout the year, I have to give myself a day off every week to relax, recharge and rejuvenate.
There are no rules in ensuring a business stays afloat, but there are certain things you must do while avoiding other things. Don’t sit down and be praying alone –– prayers alone will not help you or your business. You need God’s grace, lots of hard work, dedication and focus to sustain businesses in this country.
Also, you need to be in touch with your customers always; get feedback from them regularly, reward them when you can, and do other small, meaningful things like that. These are what I believe keep a business like this afloat and profitable.
What differentiates you from your competitors?
We started out as The Rice Place and we were the only one doing strictly rice in Ikeja. With our expansion, now we have a variety of food; everything is in one place, including the ambience. I had to go to Ibadan to get trained in how to prepare original Abula Amala and Gbegiri that is very different from what you get in Lagos. The Abula Tower we created here is in memory of my mother, and our Ewa Agoyin Oleku combo is certainly different. I hate cutting corners; everything I do has to be of good quality. I don’t compromise. Our Elubo (yam flour) and Ewedu are from Ibadan because I found out that the Ewedu in Lagos has been compromised with plenty of fertilizer and it doesn’t draw very well. The Elubo in Lagos is, sadly, mixed with all sorts of strange things and we are compelled to get it directly from Ibadan, though more expensive but of better quality. So, what differentiates us from others, among other things, are our originality and quality.
How do you tackle problems that are concomitant with running a business?
For you to run a business in Nigeria, your shock absorber has to be very strong because running a business here is extremely demanding. My first and major challenge is staffing. It is very difficult to manage Nigerians. Despite constant training, staff would always do the opposite of what you ask them to do. I don’t know if people are just absent-minded, if they are doing it deliberately or are simply unwilling to learn.
Electricity is another huge problem we face. Running diesel every day isn’t cheap. It costs us about N15,000 to power generators daily because we have to power freezers, air conditioners and so on. If we had 24 hours supply of electricity, this cost would be eliminated and it would reflect in our reduced pricing.
Sourcing quality foodstuff is also a huge issue. We keep complaining about the government, what about the wickedness we do to ourselves? We are our own problems.
Go to the market and buy a bag of rice and weigh it, it is never 50kg, as the sellers have removed a couple of De Rica. If you buy vegetable oil or palm oil or Elubo, it is sometimes mixed with something else. We have to be careful where we buy our foodstuff these days to prevent food poisoning.
As a female entrepreneur, do you have it harder than your male counterparts?
I don’t think so. I have male friends that run restaurants and other businesses. When I ask them about the challenges they face, they always mention staffing and managing people as their greatest problem. I am not saying everyone is bad, but good staff is hard to get and they are few and far between. I am not sure how the government can come in but something needs to be done about it.
When you are not in the kitchen, how do you spend your time?
I am a workaholic. I work morning to night and I enjoy it. When I am not working, which is not often, I watch TV. I have managers and supervisors, but I still watch over the business personally.
What are your plans for expansion?
We started off as the Rice Place. The plan then was to have small cubicles in different locations. But I realised over time that it was not easy to have loads of outlets and personally supervise all of them. Most good restaurants that are still alive do not have a lot of branches scattered everywhere.
People have approached us to buy a franchise but I refused because we didn’t have the same vision. It is only a good vision that can drive business. I feel when you franchise, you should still have a stake in the business as that is the only way to maintain quality across the board.
How do you deal with the public?
I am very laid-back. I prefer being behind the scenes. At our first restaurant, a lot of our customers to date don’t know I am the owner. They think I am the manager. They send me to get them water or something, and I do that without airs.
