7 Steps to Set-up Cool Room Business in Nigeria

Cool room business is a thriving business in Nigeria, it is a money spinning business, a good number of Nigerians have become multi-billionaires because of cool room business.

If you want to set up a cool room business in Nigeria then, you are ready to go into food preservation business, that is, selling of frozen food items like, frozen poultry products and frozen fish.

However, cool room business entails much more than selling frozen livestock products and frozen fish. Sometimes people who involved in cool room business sells other food items that could be preserved in refrigerator, example are; prawns, ice cream, ice block, yoghurt, etc.

That is why; much of what you will sell in your cool room business will be pre-packaged food items and preserved food items.

Read Also: 10 most profitable businesses in Nigeria

Be that has it may, to set up a successful cool room business, there are some important things you have to put in place, some of which are;

Requirement for setting up cool room business in Nigeria 

Step 1: Get a Business place

The first thing you do is to look for place for your cool room business. It should be a warehouse or a store with enough space for your cool room business.

Apart from looking for a suitable place for your cool room business, you should also understand that, cool room needs enough air in order to ensure that your food items are well preserved

Step 2: Know the size of your business

Cool room business particularly, in Nigeria is of different sizes, so you have to decide on which scale you are embarking on. You should decide whether you want to run a large scale cool room or a small scale cool room.

If you are going for small scale cool room business, then you have to know that you will only be selling to the people in your neighborhood, but if you are going for large or commercial scale, then you should know that you are going into a very big cool room business, which will have to do with packaging and importation of preserved food items. That is a big investment.

However, in this article, much of what we want to discuss will pertain to small scale cool room business, which of course, is applicable to a large scale cool room business too.

In case what is in your mind is small scale cool room business, then you have to make sure the following facilities and logistics are in place: get a warehouse, or cool room, be sure there is constant power supply plus refrigerators, and please be sure you have locate where you will be buying your products.

Step 3: Register with NAFDAC

You have to understand that since you are going to deal with food items, you have to register with NAFDAC, and do not forget that some of your products will be imported outside the country, find out what it take to register with NAFDAC, and do same.

But note that importing your consumable food items probably means that you may run a large scale cool room business.

Step 4: Know the products you are selling

You have to do a proper home work to determine what type of consumable food items you want to sell, those type you know that your neighborhood will patronize you, because as far as I know, cool room business is a multi-billion naira business, but the location of your business also matter peradventure, in your locality, there are other people who do the same business you are also doing, that calls for the necessity of determining what kind of preserved food items you want to sell.

Knowing your locality properly and knowing what kind of products you want to sell in your cool room can make you have an edge over your competitors at the event of stiff competition.

Step 5: Create your cool room

You will have to build your cool room, pay someone, who is vested in cool room business to build you a cool room, unless you want to run a small scale cool room business, then some few refrigerators are okay, but if you are running large scale cool room business, then you need a cool room.

Step 6: Be sure there is a constant power supply in your locality

You must not entirely depend on the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company for your power supply, they are likely to fail you, and so what you got to do is to have a stand-by generator to provide constant power to your cool room business.

You must take this instruction very important, otherwise your products will spoil, and your business gone, please take it essential.

Step 7: Get a supplier

You should know where to buy your products from, this is an important decision you should not shy away from, and if you must get your products available anytime that there is demand for them, you should have someone that is supplying you these products in your cool room, best still, if you can, you should be processing your product yourself.

Buy livestock, butcher them yourself, if possible or if you can still, you can venture into livestock production, own poultry farm, slaughter the chickens at maturity, preserved them in you cool room, and sell them when there is demand, by this practice, you will be making more profit than if you were buying them elsewhere of import them.

And above all, make sure that these other facilities are readily available. You will need to have weighing scale, tables and knives, customers’ bags, and you can even source for customers, that you will be supplying your products, for example, you have to source for your customers at the supermarkets, restaurants, hotels, fast food centers, etc.