'Koko' goes hitech

Saturday, May 9, 2009 (The Mirror Pg 3)

By Rebecca Kwei
‘Hausa koko’ or ‘oblayo’ may be your favourite breakfast, but how long can you wait in a queue to get a cup of your favourite porridge?
A food purveyor, Koko King, has hit the market with a variety of innovative, convenient and hygienic porridge that are catching on fast with many workers and other clients in Accra.
Koko King currently has on its product line, ‘Hausa koko’, ‘oblayo’, ‘eko egbeemii’, wheat, oats and tom brown. Other breakfast meals in the offing include plain koko and rice water.
All these dishes come with milk and a variety of bread, beef loaf, croissant and ‘kose’ to choose from at affordable prices.
According to the Managing Director of the Koko King Limited, Mr Albert Osei, he realised that many people enjoyed the various kinds of porridge sold in the country, but the way they were presented to patrons was not attractive enough.
“Increasingly, customers are looking for more hygienic, tasteful and convenient food,” he told The Mirror in an interview.
Thus, he devised ways and means of delivering the products (as breakfast) to his customers, rather than they (customers) queuing up for them.
Koko King started operations in March, last year, by providing breakfast set for the table to his customers.
He explains that the food is prepared in the local way, but presented in a more hygienic and convenient pack for easy consumption.
The products come in very attractive and hygienic sealed cups. A distribution channel has been developed with cars delivering the product to such locations as banks, media houses, telecommunication organisations, ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), among others, every morning. In every organisation, there is a sales assistant who takes care of the sales.
Mr Osei said the company started with only ‘Hausa koko’ with a workforce of only three, but as time went on, his customers started asking for other breakfast options, and this resulted in the company building its capacity by including different kinds of porridge available on the local cuisine. Now, the workforce has increased to almost 40.
Mr Osei indicates that there is a bakery that supplies his company with fresh bread every morning, but that his company also prepares its own sandwich, beaf loaf and kose.
On how customers responded to the innovation so far, he said “it’s been a tough road. A lot of people were sceptical of the innovation, but once they tasted the food, they liked it and appreciated our efforts.”
He said the customer base kept increasing on a daily basis.
However, the major challenge facing the company, Mr Osei indicated, was “consistently delivering good quality food daily. Trying to give customers the same standard they are used to everyday. One day, if the standard falls, that’s the end because food is very delicate.”
He said there are plans to establish an office in Tema and also franchise in other regions across the country.
Additionally, the company is looking at other ways of developing standard lunch meals to deliver to customers.
Mr Osei, who is an ex-banker, said most local foods could be presented in a better way, but that “the country has a long way to go.”
He said since he started operations, he had realised that most caterers presented their foods to their customers in a decent manner, and he believed that this was one of the contributions of Koko King to the food industry in Ghana.