By Olusegun Adeniyi
Come Saturday, Mrs Sandra Adio will open her Metro Restaurant in Abuja: “A culinary haven where flavours and passion converge”. Built on the same plot (then rented but now bought) where they started just as a bakery nine years ago, Metro Bakery and Restaurant is a story of resilience and entrepreneurship. It is heartwarming to see that she dared and ultimately won, even in an environment as hostile to small businesses as ours. It also speaks to the power of social media for those who deploy it for worthwhile causes. I was at the site for the new restaurant yesterday to watch as Mrs Adio put finishing touches to the elegant building ahead of the opening ceremony and I could not hide my admiration.
As an aside, in the interest of the future ‘shares’ to which I feel entitled, I have never allowed Mrs Adio to forget that on Saturday 13 December 2014, I had the rare honour and privilege to ‘declare the bakery open’ with a prayer. From that humble and unsure beginning, the food company now boasts of three distinct arms: a bakery, a pastry, and now a full-fledged restaurant. And from just three initial staff, the company now has 98 workers with an additional 10 expected next week.
The last of nine children, Mrs Adio grew up close to her enterprising mother who died just four months ago. It was from her mom, late Mrs. Kate Odigue, that Mrs Adio learned all aspects of cooking. But while that has proved to be an asset, it was more by accident than by design that she is today the proprietor of the go-to place for food lovers in Abuja.
As Mrs Adio told me yesterday, it was her husband, Waziri, who suggested to her to venture into baking and this led her to attend the prestigious International Culinary Centre for Arts in Dubai, after taking a short course at the Entrepreneurship Development Centre of the Lagos Business School. “As it would happen, the demand for Metro bread exploded, especially when I decided to put it on Instagram,” she said. “And then people started asking whether we also do meat pie, puff puff, etc. That was how we went into pastry.” But the more interesting story came with the addition of household food. “One Sunday afternoon in 2018, after I had prepared Jollof rice for the family, one of my daughters suggested posting it on Instagram. It’s one of those things you do for fun. And then requests started coming from some of our customers.”
With the assistance of her children, Mrs Adio started to prepare food to meet the small orders. And then something happened. “One day I got a call from Mrs Pat Ofilli who said she had eaten my food somewhere. She asked that I prepare food for 200 birthday guests. Not only was I shocked but I instantly told her I had no capacity to do it,” Mrs Adio said of what turned out to be the big break. “Auntie (as she now addresses Mrs Ofili who has indeed played the role of a sister to her) encouraged me that I could do it and I did. It was not long after pulling that off that I got another call from someone at an agency who said she had heard about Metro from her colleagues. She requested 600 packs of food for a training programme.”
Since then, from birthday ceremonies to burials and religious events, requests for food have not stopped coming the way of Metro, whose main line of business remains bread sold in FCT and five nearby states and now produced at a purpose-built factory a stone-throw from the restaurant, the latest venture. According to Mrs Adio, the game-changer in her food business has been Instagram. “That is where most of our customers first heard about Metro.” But running the business has had its challenges. She said: “Despite the fact that you get no support from the government and must provide your own electricity and water, what you get every day is harassment from the different government agencies. You pay all manner of charges that you wonder whether the whole idea is to force business owners to close.”
Ordinarily, a government that is interested in job creation and economic growth should be providing incentives and creating the enabling environment for more businesses like Metro Bakery and Restaurant to thrive, not striving to drive them underground or to tax them to death. Businesses that employ tens and hundreds of workers are the real engines of growth in even developed economies. Such businesses will be critical to Nigeria’s capacity to sustainably address its unemployment crisis and slow growth. The earlier the government gets this, the better for all of us. For now, a well-deserved congratulations to Madam Metro. Here’s to even greater heights!
• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com
• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com
