Smokies & Eggs Vending Business Plan
Smokies & Eggs Vending Business Plan
Smokies & Eggs Vending Business Plan Overview
This Smokies & Eggs Vending Business Plan looks at small scale ready to eat sausage, smokies and boiled eggs vendors. This as largely represented by vendors in towns selling from mobile carts or hawking in hot pots. The regulatory conditions in most counties vary but the business model more or less tends to be the same. Though the Business Plan refers to the business as the “Smokies and Egg business” it also includes sausages. The Smokies & Eggs Vending Business Plan will be biased towards sizeable urban centers.
Generally the Smokies & Eggs business operates in 3 ways:
- Cart Vendor – This is the vendor who sells from a metallic cart which can be wheeled and positioned at a particular place. This vendor may specialize in smokies or have a little of everything: eggs, smokies and sausages.
- Hot Pot Vendor – In this case the vendor puts his products in a Hot Pot and moves from one corner of the town selling. Again these can have a little of everything though most find it convenient to focus on smokies and sausages.
- Specialized Eggs Vendor – This kind specializes in boiled eggs. They put the eggs in plastic basins or crates and move around selling.
Smokies and Sausages are bought from stockists in the region. In some areas Farmers Choice sales trucks visit a town several times a week and vendors purchase in bulk. A few may purchase from supermarkets though the price is slightly higher. Farmer’s Choice is the preferred brand both for sausages and smokies.
The business involves preparing eggs, smokies or sausages for sale to customers. Eggs are hard boiled while sausages and smokies are deep fried. While individuals can cook the products themselves, most towns tend to have a core wholesale hotel which prepares the items and resells to vendors, who in turn retail through carts.
Such wholesale hotels may also offer cooking services, where a vendor may come with his smokies for instance and the hotel deep fries them for a small fee averaging Ksh.20 per packet. An attractive feature of the wholesaler hotels is the vendor’s ability to purchase exactly the number of ready products he needs say 5 or 9 smokies.
Established vendors are able, if need be, to open and maintain a line of credit with the wholesaler hotels. For new vendors the hotels offer a stock buffer as they try to establish the average number that they can move in a day so as not to over stock or be left with stale products.
The fact that there are more vendors opening business than closing means that opportunities still exist in the smokies & eggs market. Smokies, Boiled eggs and sausages are quick, relatively affordable snacks that are consumed on impulse. To many consumers they offer a supposedly superior, unique and entertaining taste and compliment usual snacks such as mandazi, roast maize and bread.
This business also requires no specialized skill to start and run. Anyone with a sense of business and who can communicate to people can run it. Simple deep frying skills are just an added advantage.
Download Smokies & Eggs Vending Business Plan / guide here