10 smart businesses you can start in Nigeria today with zero capital and make money immediately (Part 1)

How to start a cooking business with zero capital and start making money immediately

As a young person who wants to make money in Nigeria, having a side hustle is a necessity. It cushions you against the biting effect of unexpected job loss, but not just that, a side hustle helps you to save money, and remove the unnecessary pressure you exact on your salary.

But if you are not employed yet, your best bet is to acquire a skill, then turn your skill into a business.

However, the problem I have noticed is that most people are confused about starting a side hustle, while others simply do not have the required capital and resources to start a side hustle of their choice.

If you asked an unemployed young person today what business he would love to start, he would say POS business or cloth retail business. Their major reason is that these are easy to start with little resources.

Mind you, I have no problems with POS and retail businesses. I simply believe that, even though they are viable businesses and may have paid off those who started them earlier on, it is not a sustainable business model.

So, if you are looking for a sustainable business or side hustle you can start with little to zero capital, then read on.

Here are our top 10 smart businesses you can start with zero capital and start making money immediately.

1. Cooking and home delivery
2. house cleaning
3. house decoration/interior design
4. dry cleaning
5. men’s and women’s fashion wears
6. event cooking
7. Home care/assistant firm
8. mobile accessories/electronic retail shop
9. Shawarma joint
10. delivery business/courier services

1. COOKING

In 2022, the Nigerian food market is expected to exceed US$200 billion more than any other non-oil sector, according to Statista.

As humans, we cannot live without food. Food is essential to our lives, and the more we earn, the more we eat. The more we eat, the more we spend.

However, the truth is that whereas everyone can eat, unfortunately, not everyone can cook.

Although some can cook, they mostly don’t have the leisure time to cook their food, so, they depend on others for their daily food.

Also, research has shown that 90% of urban dwellers in Nigeria depend on food vendors such as mama-put joints, branded restaurants, personal cooks, and hotels for their daily food.

That is why if you can cook, it is a skill you can turn into a business and you can exploit it any day any time to make money for yourself.

And the best thing is, you can start making money immediately after you start; it doesn’t take months to pay off like some other businesses.

However, one way to approach cooking as a business is to niche down. What do I mean by this?

In this business, you have three categories of customers.

1. Individuals and families: cooking and delivering for individuals and families
2. Groups: cooking for parties and events
3. Point of order: cooking and selling as a fast food joint, ready-to-eat joint, and mobile food joints

In this article, we will focus on the first category of customers; individuals and families.

To start with, you can offer your services to working young men and women who don’t have the time to cook but depend on restaurants to get their food. Most of them wish to eat properly homemade food but cannot because of their busy schedules.

Also, some married women know they can’t cook very well but they wish for their families to eat good food so they prefer to hire a professional chef or just someone who can cook properly to their budget to make their food.

What they usually do is invite you over on Saturdays, you will make all the soups and stews they will need for the whole week, and they will store it in the fridge to serve them until the next Saturday comes.  So you can bill them weekly or monthly and they will gladly pay.

Therefore, whether you are offering your services to a single guy/lady or a family, you will be making huge money.

That is how most people survive in Lagos. You can cash in on this as there are readily available customers waiting for you.

This is what you should do:

Create an online presence as a chef. State categorically what you do. State the services you offer and how you can make the person’s life easier at little cost. State the advantage for the person working with you instead of another person.

Make some nice food and post it on your IG page and Twitter handles. If you don’t have money to cook good food, save from the internet and explain how the food is made. Or better, offer to help your neighbors and friends make their food and take photos of the food after. You can also document the process and post the video to sell yourself better.

Make a business card that sells your talent and personality. Pay a graphic designer to design a logo and social media graphics for you. You can find one at 5k. Very cheap.

Begin to share your business card in your area of influence. Eg.

1. In your church, neighborhood schools (parents who come to do school runs),
2. Office (if you don’t work yet, give it to your neighbors who work to help you share),
3. Neighborhood (Go around your neighborhood and share your card),
4. Petrol station (go to the petrol station and share your card, your best customers are there),
5. Traffic (Lagos is a funny place, most of your customers are stranded in the traffic thinking of how to make food when they get home. Imagine the joy on their face when you hand them your fliers and business card.
6. Make a video of you cooking every day, even if you are boiling water, teach people how to boil water; teach people how to crack eggs, teach people how to make noodles, how to cook yam, and even how to make semo.

Let me shock you, there are over 5 million videos on Youtube on how to fry eggs. Can you imagine that?

The more videos you make, the more content you post online, the more awareness you create, the more customers notice you, and the more money you make ultimately.

How much capital do you need?

The beauty of this is that you can start this whole business with just the N5, 000 (five thousand Naira) that you paid the graphic designer, and another N5, 000 that you paid for your business card printing. That is N10, 000 capital. I am sure it won’t be difficult for you to get N10, 000.

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What are your streams of income?

Youtube ads

You can make money on Youtube through Youtube ads. You can sign up for Youtube ads after you have about 4,000 hours of views (four thousand hours of views) which is not hard because ‘how to cook’ is a good niche. All you have to do is cook, video it, and post it.

Sponsorship

Also, another stream of income is sponsored posts or videos, or reviews. Companies who manufacture foodstuff, food ingredients, cook utensils, kitchen equipment, etc, will hire you to review their products and pay you a huge amount of money. And funny thing is, you don’t have to say much, just mention that you use their products, that is all.

Coaching

Another way to make big money is to offer coaching services to women who cannot cook. The truth is that there are women out there who cannot cook. They come from homes where they were not taught how to cook. Now they are married, they have to cook for their husbands and children. Some of them are already losing their husbands to women who cook better. You can create a cooking Masterclass and charge a fee to teach them and they will gladly pay.

Ebooks

You can package your knowledge in ebooks and sell them on digital markets like selar or amazon. Bestselling topics include how to lose weight with foods and how to add weight with foods. If you can help women lose weight by telling them what and how to eat, you are a godsend and your pocket will never run dry.

Manufacturing

When your brand becomes big enough, you can create branded products and launch them in the market. Products relating to cooking and food. Items like cutleries, cooking utensils, packaged foods, etc.

The opportunities in cooking are limitless for you.

Who is this for?

Who can succeed in this business? The truth is that not everyone can succeed in this business, but if you fall into any of these categories, then this business is for you.

You love cooking

First of all, to succeed in this line of business, you have to be someone who loves cooking. If you have no love for cooking and you just want a quick way to make money you will flop. Cooking is not easy. It is not easy to work in another person’s kitchen, to cook, clean, and do dishes; it’s exhausting work. You have to be a natural-born chef or someone who is used to cooking.

Both men and women

Research have shown that men cook better than women. There are more male chefs in the world than women. There are more successful male chefs in the world than women. Should I go on? The point I am trying to make is that both men and women can do well in this business as long as have passion for cooking.

Employed and unemployed

You can start this business as a side hustle and then when you start getting more engagement, you can quit your 9-5 and concentrate on your business full-time.

What I don’t subscribe to is the idea that you should quit your job and start this business. That is suicidal, rather, you should leverage your job, use your job as a point of contact, and then start from there.

Listen, your colleagues are your first customers. But they are more than that; they are your business partners, only they don’t know it.

This is how you can benefit from your colleagues to kickstart your business.

1. Use them to test-run your business idea by asking their opinions on your logo, business cards, business proposals, social media appearance, comments on your videos, and write you a review. The internet crawls all this information whenever someone searches for you online
2. Volunteer to help them cook during the weekends. Make sure you make videos if their kitchen is dope
3. Bring food to the office and ask them to have a taste and be your judge. Make videos and take lots of photos; make it fun. You can ask them to contribute money once every week for you to help make their lunch.
4. Beg them to help you share your business cards with their circle of influence, families and friends, church, and social media handles.
5. Invite them over to your place for weekend treats. Make something special. Make videos, take photos, and you can even go live. Make it look like a challenge, who can make better noodles, or spaghetti; or challenge your friends to cook any local dish of their choice
6. Ask them to like and share/retweet/repost your social media posts.

Why should you do this?

If you are still short on motivation, let me tell you are a few reasons why you should start now:

1. You love cooking and you want to help people eat healthy food
2. You want to make money; money is a great motivation.
3. You want to escape the rat race of 9-5 and live the life of your dreams.
4. You want to be your boss: so you can work any time and day you wish
5. You have the opportunity to do something you love and make money.
6. You want to inspire others to pursue their dreams no matter what obstacles face in their way