How To Start A Supermarket Business In Ghana

The supermarket is a place you should be able to get all
your essentials and non-essentials alike.
In good
supermarkets, you can get anything, electronic gadgets,
food items, toiletries and even fresh fruits and clothes, you
can get all of them in a supermarket.
But the major stock in
a supermarket is the grocery, they contribute to more than
half of all the supplies in any supermarket business.
It is essentially a shop but a major feature about
supermarkets is that you go around stalls and shelves to
shop for items.
It is effective for avid shoppers and brings a
lot of money to the owner because with plenty of items on
display, people see items that appeal to them and they just
grab them and add to their shopping basket.
If you are aiming to start your own supermarket business,
this article explains all the detailed requirements, the
startup cost, the profit margin, as well as every other things
you need to put into place to get started.
Where To Locate Supermarkets
Supermarkets are best located in urban cities and suburban
towns.
Small towns won’t cut it, because the majority of
buyers from a supermarket are city dwellers as they tend to
consume more stuff, and when they shop they shop
varieties of the same item.
Like tissue papers for example,
the city dweller buys a toilet paper for the restroom, a
tissue box for the sitting room and a toilet roll for the
kitchen, so the supermarket performs better in a city
lifestyle setting or suburbs.
Supermarkets do well in shopping malls, and filling stations
because these are places with high human traffic.
If they
must be situated inside a plaza then it has to have a lot of
space to accommodate the style of the supermarket, you
don’t want your customers bumping into each other or
goods cramped up in a little space or even worse, some
goods not having fortune to be displayed.
You can also
locate a supermarket in line with other shops, like you have
your corner stores.
Setting Up The Supermarket Warehouse
A warehouse is where you store your products before they
are being sent to the shelves.
They are usually located not
far from the actual supermarket or even adjacent to it.
Its
function is to keep a stash of goods that will serve as a
reserve supply when the ones in the shop are sold out
because, a shop owner doesn’t wait till his stock is
depleted before he makes a move for a restock.
It may take
several days before goods are delivered, which means
there will be empty stalls in the supermarket which is not
ideal for supermarket business as customers will start
venturing somewhere else when they start to notice they
don’t get what they came looking for.
Special care should be taken for fragile goods, ones that
are heavy should be placed below light ones and when
stacking carton packages don’t exceed the maximum
number a particular carton could carry, the maximum
stacking weight is always labelled on the carton.
Goods
that smell should not be put close to ones that do not, like
detergent and foodstuff for example.
The place should not
be damp or contain a leak (both roof and rat holes) as many
goods could be damaged that way.
And, a great security
should be in place.
Arranging Your Shelves
Arrange goods in shelves in such a way that it will be easy
for customers to navigate and find what they want.
You
should start by creating categories for your goods, then
place each item where it belongs.
Related items should be
found close to each other for example Pasta shouldn’t be
far from macaroni.
Choose suitable furniture , metal rails are good as they are
lightweight and don’t take much space as their wooden
counterpart.
But then wooden furniture takes more load,
it’s up to you to decide which suits your shop best.
Naming your shelves is a priceless idea, it will help people
navigate even more easily.
You can achieve that by placing
the names directly on the shelf (some shelves come with
available spots for name tags) or you can erect sign boards
that point to product categories, usually large
supermarkets employ the use of the type that hangs from
the ceiling.
Another important tip when arranging goods is
to separate male products from female products, it will
make things a lot easier for customers but that is not why
you did that, female customers tend to buy on impulse and
once they have all they need in front of them it is going to
be a shopping spree which means more cash into your
register.
Electricity And Lighting
Since a supermarket is built under a roof it gets really dark
when there is a power outage, you have to have a generator
set that will supply enough to power the lights and POS
machines (more on that later), and to power refrigerators.
Lighting is very important, fix as many light bulbs as is
possible in the shop.
Products
Retail is your primary concern when running a supermarket.
To maximize profits supermarkets usually discourage
wholesale of goods except on exclusive items sometimes.
Also take note the owner of a supermarket is not a reseller,
there is a huge difference, a reseller usually sells one
product en masse like a T-shirt reseller but in the
supermarket business, you aim for everything and what
really matters to you is supply and re-supply continuously
of everything under the sun.
The major product categories found in supermarkets are
listed below;
Groceries
Toiletries
Wear accessories such as sunglasses and watches
Notebooks and stationary
Clothing
Food stuff (fresh)
Food stuff (frozen)
Household items
Electronics and appliances
Kitchen supplies
Baby care
Fashion and beauty products
Simple tools such as scissors
Clothing
Restocking Your Supplies
The single most important thing while running a
supermarket business is to know i) when to restock and ii)
the quantity to restock.
One has to keep tabs on the rate at
which goods are finished so that they can get them before
they are depleted.
Also the owner/manager has to keep a
reliable and stable communication line so that you could be
reached when there is need for distribution companies to
contact you, and making a great number of contacts is
important, because your goods come from different sources,
the contact list related to this business will include
businessmen, distributors, wholesalers, product companies
(e.g. Indomie noodles), marketers etc.
Sometimes the list
may include homemade snacks from catering services or
even from individual homes around your neighborhood.
There is huge revenue from these small enterprises
because people like them but just make sure before you
start selling these products they have the necessary
requirements like a Corporate Affairs registration for example.
There are so many different items and varieties that it’s
impossible to get from one place,
Below are a list of some
of the usual restocking methods;
Distribution companies
Wholesalers
Direct from manufacturers
Online order
Distribution Companies
Distribution companies choose a set of products to
distribute, some of them distribute specific items for
specific companies while others mix the kind of products
they deal with.
They usually come knocking at your door so
you don’t have to worry about finding them but when you
start out new before you are known on the yellow pages, so
you have to restock by going to wholesalers the first few
times.
Wholesalers
There are businesses that setup huge ware houses or big
stores to sell certain type of products, they get their
products directly from the manufacturer and don’t sell in
small quantities.
Shop owners come to buy from them at a
reduced price from the original selling price to retail. Most
of your items will be coming from wholesalers.
Direct From Manufacturers
Some manufacturers allow for their goods to be bought by
small buyers like retailers.
Mostly because they don’t
produce much at a time or it is part of their marketing
strategy to sell to retailers, anyways you jump at the
opportunity.
Making Orders Online
At this technological age it is close to impossible to skim
off the internet from any business.
With products spread all
over the globe, getting your hands on them quickly has
never been easier, it is fast, it is convenient and it is cheap
as you wouldn’t need to worry about shipping costs if you
are buying in bulk, especially when one orders from China
where most products are being made .
You could use this method to buy from specific sellers like
a fashion house, and you could use it to order for items that
cannot be sourced locally.
Tools For An Inventory
Keeping a good inventory list is a must, which is an
itemized list of all the merchandise in stock. It will help you
determine what you need, how much you need and when.
The simplest way is by manually writing in a book, though
it is time consuming and very susceptible to errors.
The other way is by using barcode scanners.
Computers
fitted with a barcode scanner and the appropriate software
makes the job a lot more easier, for every item that is sold
it is registered into the system simply by scanning it, the
software marks that product as ‘purchased’ and at the
same time strikes it off your inventory, it collects other data
such as price of item so that at the end of the day you know
exactly how many of that same product is left and how
much it will cost you to restock.
Hire Help For Your Supermarket Business
Your supermarket business is going to need to be run by
assistants, some persons who do the hard labour of moving
goods to and fro, at least one security personnel, and the
sales person at the counter.
The sales person has to be
experienced and have a technical know-how of how to
operate the computer and the various software that will
come with it, know how to operate the printing machines
should be able to replace paper rolls, and should be
perform simple trouble shootings by him/herself.
There should be at least four workers in the shop that size.
Sales In The Supermarket
All the action happens at the counter when a customer is
about to pay for items.
Here, you employ what marketers
call after sales marketing, bring forward the snacks and
other small items such as batteries and small toys, things
the customer will not hesitate to buy because of their low
price, these items may save you the hassle of finding
change and put more money into your pocket.
Custom
plastic bags is also a great marketing tool, whereby your
supermarket business name and brand is printed on it and
handed to customers when they checkout.
Each and every item should be scanned by the barcode
scanner for the computer to process the transaction and
update the inventory list, and for every transaction there
should be a receipt printed and given unless the customer
states otherwise.
At times you might experience a
computer breakdown, this should not spell the end of the
day, devise a backup plan to record the sales data, which
the best way to achieve this is by writing in a book, tedious
but worth it.
Another important thing at this point is to keep things tidy
and organized, simple chores should be organized and be
done with efficiently, for example shopping baskets should
be returned to their place and not to be left at the counter
where the customer presented it.
Paying of Tax
You could easily be paying too much tax if you haven’t
registered your business properly with the CAC because
your tax will only be an estimate and you could be facing
fines.
Promotion And Deals
Participate in as many promotions as possible, help brands
spread awareness of their products.
That does not only
help them it also makes people view your supermarket
business as more legit and ‘classy’, and you might end
gaining rewards from the promotions and deals.
Supermarket business is one of the most profitable venture
in Ghana this time.
The daily products sold in
supermarkets are the everyday needs for everyone.
Follow
these guide to start your own supermarket business today
and watch as the profits overflows.