Sai Wine LTD is a Cafe located in Ghana. They focus on providing unique wine experiences to their customers, such as wine and food pairing events, wine tasting events, and so on. We reached out to their representative, Theresah, for an interview. A meeting was set with Sai Wine LTD CEO, Nadia who shared about their experience using Loyverse.

- Why and how did you start your business?

For me, it was a spiritual calling to start the business. It was something that when I was on holiday, it got in my head that people knew about wine but didn't really know how to drink it or different types of grapes, the various tools, and the whole white wine experience. It just made sense as well to take people on that wine experience and a wine journey. So, that then prompted our business to open. Within Ghana, we are the only establishments that exist that do what we do.

- What makes your business stand out from the other wine businesses in Ghana?

The only other wine businesses in Ghana are wine shops, whereas you walk in and you go and buy wine at retail price, but we don't do that. People can buy wine from us, that's fine, but we also pair our wine with our food. We have wines with different grapes from both old and new world wine-producing countries. We host wine events. So we do wine tasting events, food and wine pairing, chocolate and wine pairing, and similar kinds of experiences here. And we allow people to have a bottle or have a glass.

- Concerning the pandemic, how was last year for your business, and how did you overcome the challenges, if there were any that you encountered?

Last year was actually a blessing for us. So, our five-year lease agreement had expired in April, and Ghana went into lock-down on March the 31st. We were locked down for two weeks. And so when the ban was lifted, we had then been able to move to our new location. And then we started renovating our space. In June, restaurants were allowed to open, to accept customers to come in and in July we actually reopened in our new location and it was just fantastic. It's a fantastic new location. We got much more Ghanaian patronage than we had in previous years and we've literally been moving from strength to strength since to be honest with you.


 

- I noticed that you also have a website. Did you experience an increase in online orders from your website last year?

No, but what we did experience is now people can really get a gist of what food we have and what our prices are. So we're definitely getting more website traffic now. Okay.

 
- What is the philosophy behind your business?

I believe one should never follow other people. Knowing what one’s vision and dreams are and focusing on making it happen is what is most important. Focusing on the competition is not important. Rather, focus on constantly building that vision and bringing it into real life. I don’t believe in getting things quickly, and everything takes time and effort to come to pass.

- How did you find Loyverse?

Just on Google, to be honest with you, because, I mean, there are other software companies that are here in Ghana, but not what we wanted, but what they do is that they tend to build the software for you. And we didn't want that. We wanted something that was going to be online, easy to download onto all of our devices, and then able to manage and remotely as well, or be able to see remotely. So, then we came across the Loyverse. We were using one system before, but it just didn't have the depth that we needed. But then when we came up as Loyverse, we realised that it had the capacity, especially with the different types of items that we have, it had the capacity to handle it for us. Plus, not only that, but it also had the employee management system, which helps us with our HR elements as well. So, yeah it just made sense. 

- Did you experience any difference in your processes, your reports...?

Yeah. In terms of inventory management, it helps us a lot. And also in terms of us being able to know where we're making money, because of the element on the items where you're able to put the cost and then the price. So then that allows us to know where we're making money on certain items that really helps us a lot. And then inventory management as well. It helps us to give reports to our suppliers much easier as well.

- What do you see Loyverse doing for your business in the future?

Well, we're going to be opening more establishments of the same business. So we're looking forward to having each establishment report and being able just to look at basically a dashboard of how each location is performing. Sometimes the issue that we have is not necessarily through Loyverse, but rather the users not knowing how to update the system. Once we know the staff are better trained and more attentive to how to use the system, we know we will definitely get more usage or more value out of the app.
 

- Thank you so much for taking the time out to have this brief interview with us. Do you have any words for Loyverse team?

Yeah. That's well done and just keep it up!