A young entrepreneur, Linda Ajala owns Splurgeon Foods, a premium catering firm based in Abuja. She brings with her immense knowledge in banking and strategic planning to make the company the force to reckon with in Nigeria. DANIEL ESSIET reports
Linda Ajala started as a banker in 2013 on a monthly salary in excess of N200,000. A year into the job, she knew she wanted more, despite the opportunities in the bank.
“The job was good. I was getting a good pay. But I thought of personal development. I just wanted to do something different,” said Linda.
What would turn out to be her catering brand started out as a joke, in her own words? Linda started by selling soup bowls to her friends in the bank. She recalled having a chat with a friend on possible side of income streams, who asked why she cooked for free since she loved to cook. Why not turn it into a business? asked the friend. But this seemed a ridiculous idea. Going from earning N200,000 monthly in a corporate job to selling soup bowls for N2000.
Nevertheless, because this was something Linda enjoyed doing, she figured that if she cooked and people refused to buy, then she would eat the food herself. That is how she started and the response was great, leading to the birth of Splurgeon Foods.
Two years after she began selling soup bowls to colleagues in the bank, Linda finally quit her job to pursue the cooking business full time. But selling soup bowls was not enough business, so she arranged with a bank to sell lunch to staff. At this point, Linda employed a kitchen assistant to help out. Few months later, she added a second bank to the list, making it two bank branches where she sold lunch to staff members. She employed a second kitchen assistant.
Linda said although the profit made from selling lunch in the branches was little, the turnover was great and made it possible to maintain cash-flow. At this point, she started catering for events, acquired more assets to help in the business.
Today, she is the owner of Splurgeon Foods and the business has been growing steadily. The business is not only about great food, but also the service. Food is served with love, warmth, and passion and she works relentlessly hard daily to take the brand to greater heights single-handedly, she said.
To her, food business is one of the easiest to enter in Nigeria, with little or no barriers.This makes the industry very competitive with more people coming in daily and offering the same service for competitive prices. It is, therefore, imperative to have a competitive advantage to make it in the industry.This led her to attend Reddish Culinary School in Abuja for one year, where she learnt the art side of cooking, food styling, food photography and more.
Further, to strengthen her brand, Splurgeon Foods, she decided to specialise in catering for private and classy events with multiple meal courses, as opposed to events with large gathering and a few meal courses.
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