Manufacturing is another level of entrepreneurship

Funny story, I wasn’t involved in business when I started supporting businesses.?

When I discovered the world of entrepreneurship in 2006, I instantly dived in to help small business owners improve their businesses and get more sales. I was curious about all kinds of businesses, I was doing my research and my interviews, and I thought I did well. Little did I know, whatever advice I was providing was just the low hanging fruit consulting anyone can provide. However, I continued doing just that for 10 years.?

I started being a full time entrepreneur in 2016, and the lessons learned since then were tremendous, and my work in supporting entrepreneurs improved substantially. Thank God.?

In 2020, when COVID put my brother out of work, like thousands of people in Morocco, he decided that it’s best that he starts his own business. And this is where Labata Ben’s story started. A Moroccan food brand launched by 3 siblings, who are bold enough to embark on a journey in manufacturing, instead of choosing a safer service business.?

Labata Ben’s started by making and selling french fries to restaurants. The idea was to start small and grow slowly. Apparently, we underestimated the market size. Since the first day, the demand was huge, and we had to work overtime to deliver to all customers. Which is a very nice problem to have. The business was doing great for 3 years, and we decided to scale, by selling higher value products and increasing our production capacity.?

Every step of the process is a full time job, from applying to get a bank loan, remodeling the unit, setting up the bigger machines and freezing unit and get the necessary certifications, to experimenting and choosing the perfect potato brand, choosing the potato farmers, designing the packaging, finding the suppliers and printers of the packaging, registering the brand, getting the bar codes, designing the brochure and website, posting on social media… and on top of that, managing all the unforeseen urgent issues of everyday, broken machines, power outage, delivery car accident, customers delayed payments, or new customers big orders.?

For the past eight months, I have been working full time with my siblings on this project, and I can clearly say that my learning has never been this curved. Making the “right” decision is no longer the difficult part of the job, it’s making “a” decision every 10 minutes of the day. Dealing with farmers and the price fluctuations of potatoes every day, dealing with workers to respect sanitation requirements, dealing with low-skilled technicians to repair equipment breakdowns, dealing with the everyday deliveries in a 300 km radius, and dealing with customers and retailers who order big quantities but pay 90 days later. All these daily decisions made my “expertise” obsolete, and I love how challenging this journey is.?

Nevertheless, we are happy that our products are available in retail in over 30 locations in 10 cities, for those in Casablanca and Rabat, you can find them in U Express , Hyper U or order online on Glovo Express.?

Today, I have a new perspective on risk taking, a new perspective on supporting small businesses, and a whole new respect for the business ethics of some companies. People are the ones who make a company ethical or not, and I am strongly impressed by the teams of Glovo and U Express , our main retail partners, for their support in the past few months. I highly recommend them for all the small businesses out there who want to get their products to a wider audience.?