Starlight Kitchen: Business grown with discipline, dedication and diligence

Nihinlola Latona is the founder and chief executive officer of Starlight Kitchen, an outdoor catering firm operating in Lagos. Nihinlola is also a co-founder of Starlight Ambassadors Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) focusing on humanitarian and community services.

Nihinlola was inspired to establish Starlight Kitchen because of the need to have a sustained source of income for her NGO, targeted at feeding the poor, especially children. Since establishing Starlight Kitchen in 2016, Nihinlola’s NGO has fed over 200 people, including children for free.

“As a social entrepreneur, we thought of how to roll over sponsorship fund to, at least, make impact so that we can continuously feed people for free. This was what gave birth to Starlight Kitchen,” Nihinlola said.

The economist turned social entrepreneur told Start-Up Digest that she started her business with N50, 000. “Food is a basic need and while it should be affordable, not everyone can afford it,” she said.

She started the business at home and spent the capital on the purchase of gas cooker, pots and employing a staff member.

Since starting last year, the business has grown from one outlet to three and the number of staff has also increased to seven.

Nihinlola said she sourced her raw materials from local markets in the South-West region of the country.

She told Start-up Digest that unstable prices of food items had remained the greatest challenge confronting her business.

She urged the government to address inherent problems in the agricultural sector so that farmers could boost their productivity, stressing that prices of commodities would only decline and remain stable when supply far outweighed demand.

Apart from rising food prices, Nihinlola said that poor power supply was also a major challenge confronting her business.

She said her business could see an exponential growth if she could spend less on energy.

According to Nihinlola, the business had been able to grow in spite of recession because it was focused on doing things differently.  She equally attributed the success recorded so far to high level of discipline in managing its resources.

“We do a lot differently to remain in business. We discipline ourselves and avoid running into unnecessarily debts. To show you how differently we do things, we give free tea in this cold weather and we likewise ensure that our staff members are superbly friendly to customers,” Nihinlola said.

“Recession is a reality and it shouldn’t affect the mind negatively. Every challenge we face, recession inclusive, we use it as a positive gear to move the business forward. Good planning, with sufficient funds, helps the business to stay alive,” she said.

Nihinlola told Start-up Digest that the country could diversify its economy through the catering industry because of the profitability and sustainability in the industry.

The caterer said she would tell her younger self to think big because there was nothing impossible with the human mind. “There is nothing impossible with the human mind. If you can think it, imagine it, then you can achieve it,” she said.

Josephine Okojie and Anthonia Obokoh