Never let the economy kill your dreams
– Onasanya, Finicky boss
By FEMI MACAULAY
Monday, March 3, 2008
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Okoyomon
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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New generation eatery chain, Finicky/Afrikitch was three
years old on February 6, 2008, and within this period it has
opened four outlets in Lagos. “Our flagship outlet is
at Jibowu and it is our corporate head office.
The second outlet is at Shipeolu Street, Palmgrove; the third
is at Kilo Bus stop in Surulere while the fourth which opened
last December is on Fola Agoro Road, Shomolu,” says
youthful medical doctor turned entrepreneur Lekan Onasanya
who is the brains behind the business. Finicky sells fast
food and continental dishes while Afrikitch has an African
atmosphere and serves local delicacies.
All the outlets are tastefully designed and have a charming
appeal, which draws customers again and again, making the
Finicky/Afrikitch brand quite popular in their various locations.
In this interview, Onasanya speaks about the business and
his dreams for the winning eatery brand.
Are you not spreading too fast?
I don’t think we’re spreading too fast. I think
we have a strategy in place that is checking our quality as
we spread along. We could have rolled out at a faster rate
but we deliberately decided to curtail our expansion because
we don’t want to expand at the detriment of quality.
And there are certain core values that we’re still trying
to put in place, and uncontrolled expansion wouldn’t
allow you to monitor these in detail the way we would actually
want it to be. So, we’re not expanding too fast. We
are moving along with our capacity, in terms of human resources
and our ability to monitor quality.
What are Finicky’s core values?
The core values of Finicky are attention to detail, putting
the customer first, and going out of our way to give the experience
that is out of this world – the wow factor. Youth was
on our side when we started business, so we had a lot of fantasies
on what we wanted to do. They are not out- of –this-world
experiences because if you go to other parts of the world,
these are common things. But due to the peculiar situation
we find ourselves in -
the environmental factor – there are certain things
you would love to do and at a pace that your environment doesn’t
allow you to do. So you just have to take a step back, then
re-focus or re-organize your dreams. You don’t let the
economy kill your dreams, but you just know that the Nigeria
factor does not allow you to move at the pace you thought
you could move. So you re-strategize.
What are the challenges you face running four outlets at the
same time?
At the beginning part of opening a new outlet, you always
have start-up challenges – getting people to work, getting
the people you recruited or seconded from other places, getting
them to function as a team in terms of quality delivery, and
handling problems like power outage – just getting different
people to work without constant supervision, that’s
the start-up challenge that most people have, like inertia.
When the teething period is over – maybe one or two
weeks – things start to function without your necessarily
having to be there. So the headaches reduce and after a while
it’s just back to normal, until a new problem arises,
which is not a constant thing. Once you get the right people
to handle the right offices, the business is in safe hands.
It’s a human resource challenge. In Nigeria, we have
a lot of people with qualifications, but who don’t think.
The infrastructural problem in Nigeria makes it mandatory
that business people think about logistics, and that is one
part of our economy that people are not giving much attention
to. Abroad you have logistics companies. Some come and say
we’ll tell you how to do it. In England, you have supermarket
chains with thousands of stores and they have suppliers who
supply things almost on a daily basis because of the kinds
of things they sell, perishables and so on. And routinely
some people monitor the quality of what they are selling and
what they are offering to the customers. But in Nigeria, we’re
still doing business at a very minimal level. Because logistics
is not part of the things we are used to, people don’t
know that if one factor goes wrong, other factors under it
are affected. So we need people that can think backwards,
forward, sideways. That’s a big challenge in Nigeria
– we don’t have people who can think and solve
problems through processes. It’s a human resource problem.
Once you have good managers, business is in good hands.
What is your business philosophy?
To stay relevant you have to be innovative. Innovation is
what is going to take us to the next level. Our vision says:
“We intend to stay relevant to future generations through
an evolution with trends.” This means that we’re
already thinking of future generations; it’s not just
about a business being 10 years, 20 years, 50 years or 100
years like Coca-Cola, McDonalds, those big companies. It’s
about evolving as things are changing, as society is changing,
as tastes are changing, as the design of furniture is changing
– you’re evolving with trends, you’re not
just stuck in a moment, saying, “This is the way we
used to do it, this is the way every other restaurant arranges
their place, this is the way people serve, this is the way
their management structure is.” There is always superior
thinking. We want to evolve with trends – that’s
how we can remain relevant in 20 years or 30 years.
What drives you?
Seeing other people succeed. Seeing people without two heads
succeed; seeing people without four legs running very fast;
that’s what drives me. I read a lot of biographies and
I watch the world economy. I might not know all the answers;
I might not understand economics in depth. But from the little
I can see – I can see people who have succeeded; I can
see people with little means start companies that they pass
on to their great grandchildren. That’s what drives
me. I don’t believe it is any man’s destiny to
remain poor and irrelevant. |
