There were long queues for bread at Shoprite nearly a decade ago that one would have to squeeze through a crowd of people lined up in a single file like the Amazon anaconda snake.
One could also see twitch smiles on the faces of sellers who were clad in immaculate uniform while they attended to customers, but remained focused as the supervisors strolled across the hall
More interesting was that the streets were occupied with hawkers selling the staple food to motorists in traffic gridlock
However, as other bakers started growing their bakeries, the demand for Shoprite bread began to dwindle, that is to say the retail giant is gradually giving in to competition, an inevitable law of demand and supply.
“When a new product comes out, you will expect demand to be high, but when the product stays in the market for a while, you have had enough of it, and taste fades,” said Usoro Essien, head of Research at Vetiva Capital Ltd.
“There are competitions in those places that Shoprite is located as newer and smaller Bakeries are coming up, thereby reducing demand for that location,” said Essien.
These days, Nigerian entrepreneurs are starting bakery business with just N50,000 as many people operate the business from their backyards, as they continue to explore new opportunities in a distressed economy.
The top five bakers in the country are: Appetizers Delite, Chocolate Royal, Candie Patisseries, Cold Stone Creamery, and Caffe Tranche by Araba.
Shoprite Group recorded its worst results in 20 years, blaming high inflation and a sluggish economy in countries like South Africa and Nigeria for the disappointing results.
In Nigeria, the people are yet to recover from a precipitous drop in crude oil price that stoked a sever dollar scarcity that crippled business activities and tipped the country in its first recession in 25 years.
While the introduction of a new foreign exchange policy by the central bank and a rebound crude oil price helped the country exist a recession in the fourth quarter of 2017, the vast majority of people continue to wallow in abject poverty.
Nigeria has emerged as the country with the highest number of poor people in the world, overtaking India.
According to a report by the Brookings Institution, data from the World Poverty Clock show that Nigeria now has over 87 million people living in poverty.
The nation’s economy expanded more slowly in the first quarter of 2019 than it did in the fourth quarter of last year, the National Bureau Statistics said on Monday.
The International Monetary Fund had, in its World Economic Outlook Update released in January, revised down the country’s Gross Domestic Product projection for this year to two percent from the 2.3 per cent projected in October 2018.
The NBS, in its GDP Report for first quarter of 2019, said the GDP grew by 2.01 per cent in real terms in the first quarter, compared to 2.38 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2018.
BALA AUGIE
