Ghana: CEO's Journey of Building a Mass-Market Snack-Food Business

Geoffrey Fadoul was born to Lebanese parents and his family — spanning three generations — grew up across multiple West African nations including Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Guinea.

"After finishing up my MBA in Scotland, I decided to work for our family business in Benin and the regions we operate in across Africa," Fadoul explains.

The family operates a diversified portfolio of companies under the Fadoul Group Africa umbrella. Founded in 1966, the group began operations in Burkina Faso before gradually expanding into more than 10 African countries.

Leveraging his knowledge of West Africa's business climate and family connections, Fadoul sought to pivot away from trading toward manufacturing fast-moving consumer goods.

"I knew I wanted to manufacture products that could sell quickly in large quantities. My best bet was to produce snack foods, which people could purchase with a small amount of money," he says.

With this vision, Fadoul established Daily Food Ltd with Jean-Paul Nassar as co-founder in 2018. The industrial bakery manufactures and distributes food products across several West African countries including Ghana, Benin, Togo and Côte d'Ivoire, operating from a single Ghana factory while exporting to French-speaking markets.

During a pre-launch trip to Nigeria, Fadoul observed street vendors selling Gala sausage rolls to people stuck in traffic. "It was an eye-opening observation because we saw how popular this product was among Nigerian consumers and how quickly they sold on the streets of Lagos."

Inspired by this market potential, he returned to Ghana to produce sausage, chicken and beef rolls for street vendors and open markets. However, the Ghanaian market proved different from Nigeria's expectations. "Ghanaians did not appreciate the meat consistency of the beef and sausage rolls. Instead, our research revealed they preferred to see meat chunks in their pastries. Secondly, traffic in Ghanaian cities wasn't heavy enough to enable street vendors to sell our products to interested customers," he explains.

Facing this challenge, Daily Food chose to pivot rather than persist. The company introduced the Boss Baker cupcake in 2019, and within three months the factory operated at full capacity.

"About a year after we tested our initial product offering, we used the same machinery to produce and package our cupcakes. We were successful in this pivot, and the cupcake became a best-seller in months," Fadoul explains.

Before launching cupcakes, KFC approached Daily Food seeking localised burger bun production meeting international standards. "KFC wanted to localise their purchase of burger bread buns. So, we worked with them to develop buns that met KFC's international standards. We also registered our bread buns with Burger King," Fadoul says. The company's ISO 22000 and FSSC 22000 certifications likely influenced these partnerships.

Accessing consumer data proved complex and expensive. Fadoul built internal marketing and sales capacity using grassroots research methods — distributing samples and feedback questionnaires in markets and streets, then adjusting recipes based on responses. "We still run ongoing trials and rely on market feedback to help us build our business."

Following Ghana's success, Daily Food expanded into other West African markets. The World Bank predicted in 2019 that approximately 62.5% of Africa's fastest-growing economies would be in francophone Africa. French-speaking countries like Côte d'Ivoire maintained economic growth following the 2020 pandemic.

"Our research revealed West African countries have similar FMCG environments, where a large portion of business is done in large local markets, not supermarkets," he adds. "Before we began to export our products, we identified the big wholesalers and distributors in our category and trained these players. We gave them the resources to get our products into the hands of our end customers."

Since launching Boss Baker cupcakes in 2019, Daily Food expanded its range to include Boss Baker fruit cake, strawberry cake, chocolate cake, oat digestive and shortbread biscuits.

"Soon, our products will reach Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates," Fadoul reveals. "We have acquired all the necessary approvals and are waiting to send our shipments into these regions."