A bake or break situation – A pandemic story

As it is expected, in every new venture the road is bumpy. Mavis, a mother of four, well-known in the Duayaw Nkwanta Municipality, in Ghana as “Mavis Bakery” with an indisputable slogan “obiara se eye” (everybody says it is the best) also went through the same experience in the wake of COVID-19 in 2020.  She was in her fifth loan cycle with VisionFund at the time. 

Already struggling to keep up with producing a 5000 pieces of tea-bread per week, her oven also developed continues problem and she eventually ran into debts.

With close financial mentoring from her credit officer, she opted to increase her output rather than close her business. She took another loan to purchase more flour and other baking ingredients. She also employed six people to assist her meet her supply targets.

By the end of November 2020, she had increased her output to 60,000 pieces per a week.

By the seventh loan cycle, Mavis had purchased a locally manufactured oven to scale up production. In addition, she added butter bread and wheat bread to her baking line.

“When I decided to buy the oven, I had my doubts since the virus was getting worse day by day, but I had to, because we kept increasing output each week to meet demand,” she says.

With this daring approach Mavis extended supply to cover Sunyani, Techiman and Tepa areas, competing strong in the baking industry.

Mavis intends to acquire a mixing machine with her eighth loan cycle to help making the baking  process more efficient.

Photo and story by Abban Enoch Johnson