Beer is one of the most consumed drinks in Nigeria; with a yearly increase in the number of consumers. And as the beer’s consumption increases, the producers’ and distributors’ net-profit margin increases too. So, you can tap into this growing and fast selling business, if you are looking to start a business that will make money for you fast.

Wholesale beer business involves buying brands of beer in trucks or large quantities from producers and selling to retailers and consumers in small quantities. This business has attracted a lot of market attention in Nigeria because of the growing consumption of beers . When you walk around the Lagos metropolis and so many other cities in Nigeria, you’ll discover that there are no party celebrations without beer. In restaurants, beer parlour and drinking bars, where people go to enjoy themselves and have fun; you’ll definitely find bottles of beer served to them. In games and movie centers, people also drink one or two bottles of beer. So, distributing or selling of beer is fast selling business in Nigeria.

Read also: How to Start a Soft Drink Wholesale Business in Nigeria

In this article, we’ll look at how to start wholesale beer business in Nigeria. But before then, we have list of brands of beers you can distribute and their producers. When starting this business you can reach them to request for their brands’ distributorship right.

Brands of Beer and their Producers

Some list of brands of beers to sell and their producers include:

• Black Gold Stout, ShakaraZobo Ale, First Lady Ipa, Harmattan Haze – these beers are produce by Bature Brewery.
• Wilfort Dark Ale, Tusk – the producer is Sona Breweries PLC.
• Hero, Grand Lager –Hero and Grand Lader is one of fast selling brands of beer in Nigeria, manufactured by Pabod Breweries.
• Hero Lager, Castle Milk Stout – the producer is Intafact Beverages Limited. Intafact Beverages Limited and Pabod Breweries Limited (companies with similar objectives) are merged into International Breweries Plc
• One Lager, lager, Lion Stout – these brands are produced by Mopa Breweries Limited
• Malta Guinness, Goldberg, Guinness Foreign Extra Stout – these beers are produced by the Guinness Nigeria
• Star Lager, Star Lite, Desperados, Star Radler – manufactured by the Nigeria Brewery
• Trophy lager, Trophy Black – produced by the International Breweries Plc

Steps to Start Wholesale Beer Business in Nigeria

Learn how wholesale beer business work

The first step in starting a wholesale beer business in Nigeria is to learn how wholesale beer business works. Knowing how the beer wholesale business works in a practical sense will help you to reduce the risk of losing your capital and equipped with basic knowledge of channel of distribution. You can meet someone you trust that has experience in selling beer at the wholesale level to mentor you.

You can also undergo an apprentice training under an established and reputable beer wholesaler. This will help you to understand some of the challenges in the business and possible ways to overcome them when you start. A learning period of four to five-month will be a great boost to your beer wholesale business.

Carryout a Market Survey

The next step is to carry out a market survey in other to get a better understanding of the market for this business. Market survey will give you an idea of the best location and the brands of beer that are fast selling. It will show you the geographical location you’ll need to cover and dominate.

When you run an effective market survey for your wholesale beer business, you’ll easily

• Know and understand your target market
• Get acquitted with the best brands of beer
• Leverage on new emerging brands of beer
• Estimate the number of customers that you can reach

Without good market survey, you wouldn’t be able to put down a good business plan for wholesale beer business.

Register Your Business

Another important step in starting a wholesale beer business is to register your business. Business name registration is an essential part of any serious business. Most customers will recognize your business by its name while your business-to-business relationship and trust will also increase.

The major beer-producing companies will only accept your application to become a wholesale distributor when you have a registered business. This is why you must register your business name with the Corporate Affairs Commission.

To register your business name online, kindly follow these easy steps. If you prefer going to their office, then you can visit any of these Lagos branches of CAC to register your business name:

• CAC Ikeja: 50/52. Toyin Street, Opposite Water Parks, Ikeja, Lagos.
• CAC Ikoyi: Maku House, NO 109, Awolowo Road, Opposite Standard Chartered Bank, Ikoyi, Lagos.
• CAC Lagos Island: 18/20 Catholic Mission St, Lagos Island, Lagos.
• CAC Oke-agbara:36 Bello St, Off Ajisegiri, Ladipo bus stop, Ladipo – Shogunle, Lagos.
• CAC OkeIgbala, Ketu DCC Headquarters: 71 Ikosi Road, IkosiKetu, Lagos.

Get a Good Location

For your beer wholesale business to thrive well in Nigeria, you need to get a location where it will be easier for you to give your customers timely delivery.

A good location should be:

• Close to the customers
• Easy for customers to locate, this is important for new customers
• Accessible to cars and trucks
• Well protected with a good security

Rent a Warehouse/Store

When you’ve register your business; the next step is to rent a warehouse or store where you’ll store the crates or cartons of beers. You will need a spacious warehouse for adequate storage of your stocks.

The cost of renting a warehouse in Nigeria varies depending your location and level of development of your area. The cost of renting a warehouse in city will be high compare to the cost of renting a warehouse in rural area. But the sum of one hundred thousand naira (N100,000) to five hundred thousand naira, you can rent a good warehouse in the city.

A number of factors to consider when renting a store include:

• Warehouse Space
• Access to electricity
• Cleanliness and attractiveness
• Access to water

Above all, make sure the store you choose to rent does not eat up the capital for your beer wholesale business.

Select Brands of Beers to sell

Selecting brands of beers to sell is the next step take, once you’re done with warehouse renting. There are different brands of beer in the market today. During your survey, you may have discovered that some beers are consumed more than others. It is at this point that you decide on the brands of beers that you will stock for your customers.

The table below shows the different brands of beer, their respective producers and contact address in Lagos. Take a look at the table and select top selling brands of beers in location.

List of some of the brands of beers you can find in Nigeria and their producers:

Get Truck for your supply

Get a truck for the supply of the beers. Sometimes, you may receive an order to supply cartons of beer to a customer within a stipulated time, without a truck; you can’t deliver a timely service.  So, I suggest you get a truck for your beer delivery. Getting a truck will help your to deliver orders quickly.  With a truck you’ll have more market competitive advantage and drive more sales.

You can acquire a truck for your beer wholesale business in the following ways:

• Buy truck – this is the best way to deliver the orders of your customers because you are in control of the truck. But, you should know that this may be an additional cost to your start-up capital.
• Rent trucks – there are truck rental businesses out there that rent out trucks in exchange for an agreed amount of money. Using their service may be ok for the start. But you should know that sometimes the truck may not be available for you because you may not be the only one renting it.

In addition to getting a truck, you may need a driver that will assist you in delivering the orders to your customers.

Raise Start-up Capital

The next step is to raise your start-up capital for the business. Money is the backbone of all business. The beer wholesale business requires a large amount of money to get started. You’ll spend roughly nothing less than ₦1million to start a beer whole business. This will cover the cost of renting a space, hiring or buying a truck, initial deposit for stocks, business name registration and marketing

Some ways to raise capital for the wholesale beer business include:

• Partnering with another business-minded individual who may be interested in the beer wholesale business.
• Obtaining loan from banks. You can get a loan from micro financial banks. Please take this option with great consideration because of the timely payment of the loan.
• Borrowing from families and friends: Please note that people will most times support you when you have part of the capital already.
• Using your savings: If you have worked for a while and have saved some money, you can use it as your start-up capital.

Once you’ve raise the capital needed to start the beer wholesale business, jump to the next step.

Apply for a Wholesale Distributorship right

Now that you have all it takes to start your beer wholesale business in your chosen location, contact the beer producers to request for distributorship right. You can apply to the respective companies to become their distributor at the wholesale level. You can also get your stock from other major distributors close to you or buy directly from the brewery. This is the best only if you are not far from the producers.

Employ Staffs

The beer distribution business is practically not a business that you can run all by yourself. You certainly need people that will assist you.  You need to hire the services of workers like:

• Drivers
• Sales representatives
• Accountant
• Secretary
• And even Loaders that will load and offload the beers for you.

These workers should be employed either on a full-time or part-time basis depending on your capital.

Advertise/Promote your Business

Advertising/promoting of a business is one of the important steps necessary for the success of any business, Beer wholesale business is not an exception. At a start, you need to put up strong advertisement to reach as many customers as possible for your beer wholesale business. This is the only way to penetrate the market. You can use both offline and online advertisement, leveraging on:

• Social media
• Discount selling
• Free delivery services
• Offering Freebies

Always bearing mind in that the more customers you reach, the more money you’ll likely make. Advertising your beer business will give you an edge over other beer distributors in your areas and reinforce your brand ideology to the people.

Keep Track of your Sales Records

Finally, it is good you keep track of the entire sale you make because it will help you to understand if you’re making profit or not. Again, recording your sales will help you to know when you have stock and when you’re out-of-stock.

NB: Please, try as much as possible to avoid selling on credits to customers. This will drag your sales record backward, putting on sales deficit.

How much does it cost to start wholesale beer business in Nigeria?

On a large scale, you’ll need a rough estimate of seven million to ten million naira (N5, 000,000 – N10, 000,000) to start a wholesale beer business in Nigeria.

This will cover the cost of:

• Renting a Warehouse = N100,000 – N600,000
• Cost of business name registration/incorporation = N30,000 – N250,000
• Buying a truck = N2,000,000 – N4,000,000
• Getting distributorship right and stocking your Warehouse with different brands of beers = N5,000,000 – N10,000,000
• Hiring workers
• Logistics

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