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Kiki’s Pot is a food vending and delivery business located in Ghana that was founded in 2016 by a single woman with a great vision. Mrs. Mandy envisioned a successful business and worked hard and with determination each day to achieve what she has today. Follow along to learn her story and her experience with Loyverse. How did your business start? We are a service provider, we deal only with food: fast food, a little bit continental and local on the side. Our business started in 2016. When we started this online and delivery service, this type of business was less prominent in the Ghanaian market. Customers used to go to the facility and pick up the food. I started thinking, why not offer a food delivery service to facilitate the people who might not have the time to pick up their food? Prior to that, we were going only to a food festival which happens once a year. The festival is called Chale Wote Festival and is a big festival where many vendors participate and sell all kinds of things. After the festival, people called our number and asked us to prepare them dishes they had tried at the festival. This was the motivation to start. We started the business at home. First, we had a small number of orders, but later the demand increased, and we had to hire a lot of riders to fulfill all the requests. We deliver the food to offices or homes, wherever our customers feel comfortable having lunch. As time went on, we had to move out. Our first pick-up shop was opened two years ago. How did you first learn about Loyverse? One of our biggest challenges was finding the app to use for sales, inventory, and all of that. When we started, at the end of the day, we would manually write down all of the sales, including information such as Customer name, Customer contact, the order details. Later on, we move to Excel as our tool to keep a record of the sales. After three years, we met a local company that had software for us to use. We used that software for a while, but we understood that it was not giving us what we wanted: the sales analysis, the customer number, the number of visits for each customer, and sales by item for a selected period of time. Because of the lack of these options, it was becoming frustrating to work with this software. At that time, I started to search online for better alternatives. I found an app that I liked, but I had to call them because they were not from Ghana, they could not understand my English, and it was very difficult to communicate with them. Disappointed, I continue searching. Then, I found Loyverse POS app. I studied the app myself to understand how it works, I did a couple of demos, and I thought, “This is it, this is what I am looking for”. This is how we started with Loyverse. Of course, I had to build everything from scratch because I had to add my items and arrange them in the correct way according to my menu. One thing that I found very helpful was the online customer service. I could type a question, and they would guide me step by step. I read the tutorials carefully to understand how everything works. It was something exciting for me because I had somebody 24/7 guiding me. It was risky as well because I could not see the end result clearly, but it was worth it. One of the questions I reached out to customer service was how to add delivery fees. They explained to me that I could add the delivery fee as an item and indicate the price or leave the price empty to indicate the moment of the sale, and this worked. Loyverse has dropped that stressful feeling during the day when you think of all the things you have to do and how to track the sales in the restaurant. Now I don’t even remember the last I was there, but I can use the Back office to track all the activity of my business in real-time from anywhere. What has been a challenge you had to face as an entrepreneur? I would mention the pandemic period. During the pandemic, we had to shut down completely. It wasn’t easy at all, because most of our workers work with us. I also have children, and my mother also lives with me. I could not risk someone geting infected and spreading the virus, so we shut down completely. During this time, there was also a lockdown in Ghana. After the lockdown was removed, we started the business again. The economy has changed now, everything has become very expensive. The inflation has reached a very high level, but we cannot increase the prices of our products because the price of the ingredients is changing every day, and if we increase the prices of our products accordingly, it will result in the increase in prices 5X which does not make sense for the business. We have just been coping and taking it one step at a time. How do you advertise your business? We use Instagram to advertise our business. We have a huge customer base on Instagram. We have a WhatsApp customer base as well, and there we advertise our products using WhatsApp stories. We also use bloggers. We send them products, and they display them with their audience, and this brings traffic to us. We also do Facebook. Are you using any of the add-on services that Loyverse offers? Yes, I am using Employee Management. I have added employee who now has his own login. I can track his sales and his working hours. I have a subscription to Advanced Inventory as well. The feature that I am using most is the stock adjustments. Not because the other features are not useful but I needed more time to explore them thoroughly. I have a regular job besides the restaurant. But, as much as I had time to check, Purchase Orders and Inventory counts seem very good features. Did you and your employees have any difficulties learning the system? Not at all. All the items that we offer in Kiki’s pot I have entered myself from scratch. I studied the system and was able to master it. An advantage that Loyverse has in comparison to the old POS system that we were using is the Margin. I really wanted to see the Margin for my items, and I am really happy that Loyverse has this feature. It has really helped to streamline the raw materials. Now everything that goes out: a portion of rice with chicken, we know the number of chicken lefts, the number of portions of rice left, and the number of cups used. All these features were what I was looking for and did not find in other software that I tried prior to Loyverse. Also, as I mentioned, the possibility of managing my business remotely is a dream come true. Learning the system was easy because you have your manual. If I want to use or learn a feature, I go to the manual. I wish I had the time to sit and go through the whole user guide, but since I don’t have so much time, I check the tutorials for the features I am interested to learn. Why did you decide to become an entrepreneur even though you are already working somewhere else? What really pushed me was a situation that happened in the corporate where I work. Most of the senior managers come and go based on politics or connections. They come, stay for 6 months or a year and go, usually because they have links to another company. Me, even though I am a senior staff, I am not a manager and do not have many connections to other companies. If something happens, where would I go? I started my business so that if something might happen, an emergency, something unexpected, I have my business to rely on. Building my business gave me the opportunity to offer jobs for other people as well. Of course, being an entrepreneur comes with challenges, and sometimes you wonder if you are doing the correct things. But, when you speak with other entrepreneurs and understand that they are facing the same challenges and these challenges are common, you have more determination to work toward a solution. What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs? My advice to young entrepreneurs is: Make sure you are determined and focused. Be aware that things will not go all the time according to your plan. Things will happen, and you will get shocked. You have to be focused and love whatever type of business you are venturing into. If you don’t love it once there is a shake, you will give up easily. So just be focused and determined and love what you do. Thank you for your time and for sharing your experience with Loyverse Community.

Geonaas Pharmacy Ltd is proud to be the Pharmacy the community can rely on. Located in Accra-Ghana, their kind and knowledgeable team provide customers with adequate prescription medications and other health-related products and services. They are aware of all customers’ needs and offer a variety of services intended to make it easier for you to stay healthy. Why did you decide to open a pharmacy? There is a high demand for drug dispensers in Ghana. People are always eager to find the best solution when it comes to their health. Due to this high demand, it is perfect for you to venture into the pharmaceutical business. Of course, before you venture, you need to have a broad idea of how the pharmaceutical world is, and with that, you will be able to run the business. How does your pharmacy stand out from other pharmacies in your country? There are a lot of pharmacies in Ghana, and you need to adopt a mechanism that will make your business stand out. Geonaas Pharmacy Ltd's staff works diligently around-the-clock to enhance patients' health outcomes. We not only maintain a well-stocked pharmacy but also give each customer individualized attention and trustworthy services that make staying healthy convenient. We serve our customers by providing them with simple access to the drugs and services they require and deserve. We do this by adopting a holistic approach to each individual and thorough medication management guidelines. We have an online shop, and we make sure to chat online with our customers and know their requests. If customers prefer their medicine to be delivered, we make sure to provide this. We are constantly striving to make the customer happy. What is your philosophy in business? We always set up a target for the day. When working, we are not allowed to play with our phones or do anything else besides the job. Anything that is against the company's work ethics is not allowed. How do you find Loyverse? A friend of mine recommended it to me a year ago. I tested the system and fell in love with it. I was the one who introduced the system to the owner of the pharmacy and convinced him to implement and use Loyverse in our pharmacy. How has Loyverse benefited your business? We have been able to work efficiently with Loyverse. Loyverse does all the work for us. The integration of the goods in the service is perfect. What are the features of Loyverse most convenient for your business? Let’s take the inventory. Loyverse will always tell you when your items are in Low stock so you can decide what goods you need to buy. We are also using the paid services: Employee Management and Advanced Inventory. Employee Management allows to give the employees certain access rights and protects sensitive information. We are planning to open new branches soon and some features in Advanced Inventory such as Transfer order might be helpful to us. What message would you like to give to other entrepreneurs? If you are an entrepreneur, you need to take risks. Every business comes with risks. If you are afraid to take them, you will not be able to evolve. You need to be careful about the kind of business you are venturing into. Make sure you have a broad knowledge of what you want to do and that you know that you can do it well and do it perfectly.

There is always a supermarket next to a filling station, and it seems a filling station cannot be considered complete without a supermarket. This is the story of an oil company in Ghana, which has more than 15 branches of filling stations across the country and decided to complement them with supermarkets. Today they run a powerful business model and use Loyverse to manage their supermarket chain. Mr. Owusu shares with us how he found Loyverse and the features that simplified the sales process and inventory management in their supermarkets. Can you briefly describe your business? We are a supermarket chain. Initially, we have around 15 filling stations across the country. We decided to open supermarkets in each of these filling stations. We sell items such as soft drinks, alcohol, food items, and certain beauty items such as soups and deodorants spray, etc. We have some branches in Kumasi, Accra, central region, basically, we have branches all over the country. Because we had many branches, we had difficulties distributing the goods between them. We were using software that was not cloud-based. If we wanted to update the stock in any of the stores, we had to go there and update the stock locally. We were looking for a system to register the transfer orders and accept them in the same place and update the stock automatically in both locations. When we started with Loyverse, there was learning chaos, but we got the hand of it in 2-4 weeks and have been using Loyverse for 3 years. It has been a very very good experience so far. How did you first learn about Loyverse? I found Loyverse myself. I am an IT person. My boss threw a challenge at me. He said that he needed software which could be used to manage all of our stores in one place. I started searching online. There was a person that came from the US, and he was using one of the most popular POS there. He bought one of their machines and asked me to go and set it up. That is when I found out that there are POS that can be installed on Android and iOS devices which were amazing. The problem with this POS that my friend was using was that you could use them only with their hardware, so this did not work for us. I continued my research and found Loyverse. I decided to give it a try. When I downloaded it and decided to learn how to use it and how it operates, I fell in love with it and its simplicity and user-friendly interface. What features of Loyverse did you find most useful for your business? Advanced Inventory is a very powerful tool. We use it a lot. We update the inventory in one location, so when we have the goods, we update and send the goods to the store. It is very good that we have past information, meaning that since we start making the Purchase Order, the document will remain in the system. This means that if later I need to see this document, I can find it easily in the system. We use Employee Management as well. Being able to manage the access rights of employees is extremely important for us and Loyverse made this possible. Did you use the premium version since the moment you started using Loyverse? As I remember, we have always used the paid version because when you activate the Advanced Inventory, it gives you a 14 days free trial first and we used this trial. When the free trial finished, we immediately activated the subscription, and we have been using it until now. What devices are you using with Loyverse POS device? We are using Android-based terminals. When we started, we were using tablets. We had a router and connected a printer and the cash drawer to the tablet. Right now, we are using POS systems, an all-in-one Android POS system. We have installed Loyverse Dashboard as well. Loyverse Dashboard is a fantastic app. We have given access to the employees to the Dashboard app, so that in the morning, when they are closing the shift, they have to count most of the items so that another employee can take over. We have installed the Dashboard app on their phone, so they can check their sales for the shift and also check what items are low in stock and inform the management to supply their branch. What are your plans for the future? There are some locations of our filling stations that are not businessy advisable to open supermarkets. These locations are not in the city or are in remote areas. But we are opening new stations every 6 months, and with the increase of the fueling stations, the number of supermarkets will increase. We are currently working in 5 more fuel stations which will have supermarkets as well. What message do you want to give to young entrepreneurs? If you want to open a supermarket or any type of business, a recommend you to try Loyverse. The Loyverse app is an amazing tool for your business, it is easy to use and yet very powerful. It will help you manage your inventory and set different levels of access rights for your employees. I highly recommend Loyverse to anyone who wants to open a business.