Pelumi Oluwadare, a Political Science Education graduate of University of Nigeria (UNN), Nsukka, has turned her passion for chin-chin into a thriving business. She began by making the crunchy snack for her family, friends and colleagues, before going commercial
By Eberechi Obinagwam
Pelumi Oluwadare, a Political Science Education graduate of University of Nigeria (UNN), Nsukka, has turned her passion for chin-chin into a thriving business. She began by making the crunchy snack for her family, friends and colleagues, before going commercial after encouragement from them. With Royalpelz Crunchy, Pelumi now delivers mouth-watering chin -chin to fans across the South East Region, balancing her entrepreneurial venture with her 9-to-5 job.
Starting up Royalpelz crunchy
Pelumi’s journey into entrepreneurship began with her love for baking, particularly chin-chin. With a drive, she went online to learn how to make confectionery, specializing in the trade. As she learned it, she started practicing it at home, making it for her family to munch at weekends. In her 200 level in school, she also helped her friends, course mates make some before she finally settled down with it as a business.
“It all started for the love of chin-chin. Among all the snacks, I love chin-chin more. I decided to learn it so I can make it for myself. I went online to learn. After learning it, I started practicing it at home, making it a weekend thing for my family to munch on. When I went to school, I continued with it. I remember my friends would contribute money together and give me to make chin-chin for them because they knew I was good at it. At a point they encouraged me to make it a business but I didn’t welcome the idea because I thought it would disturb my studies and make me lose focus of what I came to school to do,” Pelumi told TheNiche in an interview.
In 2022 while serving as a Youth corps member in a real estate company in Lagos, Pelumi brought her tasty chin-chin to work and shared to her colleagues who were amazed by the taste of her product and encouraged her to make it a business and not just for personal consumption.
“I remembered one said, wow! You make this and you are keeping it all to yourself? Go commercial. I thought about it and decided to start it up as a business. So, I started bringing it to work for sales, I sold it to neighbours, went to shops to supply and before you know it, I started getting orders from referrals,” she said.
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Pelumi is happy that she took the bold step, “I am most grateful for taking that bold step. What started as a personal and family consumption went commercial. I started seeing money to settle myself and pay bills.”
Capital
Pelumi started with her personal savings as a corps member. As she sold, she got some profits to continue. “After my service with the Real Estate company I served, I was retained and started earning salary which I also poured into the business for more production and profits. But it’s not been easy getting a large quantity of products because of the cost of materials, but we keep pushing with the little I can afford.”
Pelumi is still maintaining her job in the Real Estate company while selling her chin-chin as a side hustle. According to her, she can’t afford to quit her job now because the salary she gets supports her business. “Though challenging, I can’t quit. Sometimes I feel I could just stop the job and concentrate on my business but no, I can’t because I still get money to add to my business too as it grows. Closing from work, 5 o’clock, getting home and starting the preparation from mixing, cutting and frying, it’s not easy, but that’s the situation I find myself, so I don’t have choice, I have to keep going. but I will surely quit my 9-5 job someday because you can’t depend on a paid job forever. You have to have something for yourself and I am glad I am building something for myself for the near future,” she said.
Market place
After Pelumi introduced the chin-chin to colleague, some with different taste buds complained while a number of others loved it. Then she sold it to her neighbours. The next was the market place where she got a lot of rejections. “There was this particular shop I went to and the woman rejected me. She said, she already had someone that supplied her with the stuff. At first, I was so disappointed. But I didn’t relent. I went there the next time and gave her some for a taste to see if people would buy or not while dropping my phone number with her. So, I thank God, the following week, she called, and said it’s okay, and asked me to come and supply. That was how I started supplying her and others as well. Penetrating the market didn’t take me too long,” she said.
Near accident
Because Pelumi still retains her 9-5 job, she always makes her chin-chin either on weekends or after work when she has urgent orders. On a particular day, she returned from work feeling dizzy but could not afford to sleep because she had orders to deliver. So, she needed to keep the watch to fry her chin-chin. While frying, suddenly, everything poured on the floor from the fire, “Perhaps, I must have mistakenly touched what is not necessarily with my sleepy eyes because I was already exhausted but I needed to meet up with my orders. I just mopped the whole floor and threw them away. Thank God I had groundnut oil, flour and other ingredients. So, I started afresh,” she said.
“I lost out from that business. I didn’t make any gain from it. But my happiness was that I didn’t get hurt and I was able to deliver. That experience would have made me stop my paid job but in another thought, it was not yet time. It taught me to be more careful and plan myself,” she added.
Breakthrough
Pelumi says the additional revenue source from her chin-chin business is helping her pay bills, sorting her siblings more than when she was depending solely on her salary.
“Before now, I depended solely on my paid job and most times, before the month ended, I would have run out of cash and might even go borrowing,” she said. Her confidence in holding on to the business was when she got a large offer that kept her pushing. “Sometime, a colleague called and asked me to supply a large quantity of chin-chin and paid me upfront for the job. I was surprised when I got the whole thing and I was like, this thing will surely pay o,” she said.
Business in Nigeria
The owner of Royalpelz Crunch said her challenge as a business owner in Nigeria is inflation. “Example you may buy something for N500 naira today by next week you go to the market, it has increased to N1000 probably without the value you bought for N500 and your customer buying the product don’t want to understand maybe why you reduce the quantity of this product,” she said.
Managing with inflation
The Ekiti born entrepreneur, said she does not change her price, her price still remains N1000 but what she does is to reduce the size of her chin-chin, ” And that was early this year. I just adjusted the size to fit in with the price of things in the market.”
Japa
The young thriving entrepreneur said she has no plans of relocating abroad but would rather work hard to be more successful and impact lives by creating job opportunities for young people. “Let’s not deceive ourselves, all countries have their own challenges that they are facing (one might just be bigger than the other. I don’t have family over there. If I am to relocate, I will be starting all over again in a strange land. I don’t even think of it. It’s better I am here, doing my business, working hard and by the grace of God everything will be fine. Even if I want to travel, it will only be for vacation. I want to impact lives, employ people and contribute to the economy. I see my business growing very big,” she said.
About Pelumi
Pelumi is a graduate of Political Science Education from the University of Nigeria (UNN) Nsukka. She is passionate about her business while she also works to support it.
Learning her skill online, she has kept on learning to be better than she was yesterday. She also teaches people how to make good tasty chin-chin.
