Juvana Foods has been operating in Harare since the 90s. Renowned for its tasty chips, its one of the few restaurants that have stood the test of time. Its still kicking and the food still tastes the same, the owner is still the same. We hope to do an interview with the owner of this place and find out a few business tips to share with our members.

For now we feature some of the comments from ZBIN members- folks just love Juvana!

Victoria Mbauya And the food still tastes good!

Tendai Bond Cash-Baroness WeMhazi Hanzi paibikwa ma chips anonaka. Generally ma chips eku Zim anonaka hawo. Kutodarika ema British vacho

Mdala Wa Rue Uyu is one of the few mu city centre vane businesses e more than 20 yrs

Lindsay Utsiwegota When i came to Zim i went to town specifically for Juvanna chips.

Namatayi Maiguru VaNoku Jipi repa juvana mnandi

Mdala Wa Rue Morizivawo here ?

Namatayi Maiguru VaNoku Kubvira ndichikura and when i came to zim i had to eat it

Alice Marimo They still make the best chips in town

Theresa Sithole Standing the test of time, ndakadya pie ipapo nanhasi I remember the taste

Mai Kuku Masiziva machips avo kwakumberi

Rowena Jacobs Nice chips, even after all these years

Chloe Razemba Juvanna ndizvo! And their portions are generous too.

Laureen Munodaani Mushati-Makoko Added on my list..I miss maChips ekumba the best in the whole world

Mdala Wa Rue Yeah wen u visit Harare Juvana chips is a must buy

Laureen Munodaani Mushati-Makoko Asi kunga uchafusa mamwe kutakura muLuggage

Tapiwa Nyaruwata yuwi mufushwa we chips kkkkkkk wandinakidza taita

Moreblessing Tsungai Jipe Jipe paJuvanna unombotanga wadya yekombi ukapfuura nepo uri broke

Moreblessing Tsungai Ndapinda muHre ndaita practical remembrance ndapfuura ndikambodzura ndangariro

Exavior Chitova Chivige Jipi repa Juvana rakapenga kani nekahuku kacho, vanogona basa

Joseph Diamond Juvannah mukuwasha wedu anoendepi iyeye

Apton Kanyemba pataitamira mababe

Fortunate Sikirwayi Hii ndabva ndafunga ma chips avo and that huge pie

Nax Chick Ndatotenga ma chips imomo nhasi

Spiwe Tapiwa And still save the same chips

Mukunda Wekwa Midzi hot dog ine ma banger ane sauti yekuisa nebhara

No matter where your business stands, you likely welcome the opportunity to make more money and land new clients in the coming year

What can you do to take your business to the next phase? These ten tips can help you expand in 2016.

Fire Your Worst Client

You may feel that you can’t afford to lose even one client but chances are, there’s one person who demands more time than the others. Unless that client is paying for that extra time, this is the year to cut ties. Even if the client pays the same as the rest, the daily stress that comes with dealing with demanding, finicky clients isn’t worth it.

Reach Out to New Prospects

Expand into a New Market

If you’ve limited yourself to a particular regional area or industry, consider going beyond those boundaries this year. One new client in previously-unexplored territory could lead to referrals to others in that area, growing your business exponentially faster than staying within your comfort zone.

Travel to Meet a Client

So much of business today is handled remotely, entrepreneurs can go months without seeing clients face to face. In some cases, they have clients they’ve never even met. This year make an effort to meet at least one client in person. You’ll find the face-to-face experience helps form a bond you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Outsource the Small Things

In the early days, business owners often take responsibility for everything, since they can’t afford to hire employees. But today’s business owners can outsource duties online through services like Upwork and FlexJobs. By outsourcing small things, you can focus on attracting new clients and growing your business.

Change Your Hiring Practices

If you’ve already grown to the point that you have a team of employees, consider shaking up your recruiting practices in 2016. Hire someone who brings a unique skillset to your team, even if it means contracting with a recruiter to find the perfect person. By diversifying your talent pool, you’ll bring a new perspective to your daily work environment, brainstorming sessions, and client meetings and possibly open doors for your business to pursue new projects.

Attend a New Conference

When you started your business, you may have skipped conferences due to a lack of funds. If you did attend them, you probably focused on a few events within your own industry or region. This year, consider attending a conference outside your industry or in a new area of the country. You’ll make new connections and get perspectives you wouldn’t have otherwise heard.

Pursue Your Passion

Spend some time thinking about what makes you happy, whether it’s through your business or in your free time. Then set time aside each week for that activity. Studies show pursuing a passion can add an extra eight hours of happiness to your week. Most importantly, it will prevent burnout and remind you why you work so hard each day.

Participate Online

If you own a business, chances are you have a website and several social media accounts, but are they active? If you aren’t participating in your online presence, you may lose followers who see your sites as outdated. Use a dashboard service like Hootsuite to keep up with all of your social media accounts in one place.

Take a Course

Truly successful people never stop trying to learn and better themselves. Find a way to take a course related to your business, whether it’s a webinar, local networking workshop, or through an online education site. Even if the course is on a subject you’ve already mastered, you may feel inspired by a refresher on the basic principles of that subject.

Each new year provides new opportunities to take your business to the next level. Make sure you know what your goals are and work each day to eventually reach those goals. You’ll not only be maintaining your business’s current success, but you’ll be ensuring your success for many years.

Good morning dear forumites, today we meet again and look at the lucrative business of car parts for second hand vehicles imported from Japan. In Zim estimates put the number of second hand Japanese vehicles at more than 3 million in Zimbabwe and the question that immediately comes to mind is;

Who provides service kits and car parts for these vehicles?

Cdes and friends you too can benefit from this industry. At the present moment its only our good brothers from West Africa who benefit and the reason why they benefit is due to trust and working together. You will have to work as a team in order to raise capital requirements of up to $40-$60k.

Our brothers from West Africa  source these car parts from mostly Dubai and other Middle East countries, East Asia is also included in the equation.

So what do you need to do?

1.Get into groups where you trust each other, ideally workmates, church mates or relatives, pool resources and find out the process of importing car parts.

2.Develop marketing strategies for your car parts -consider selling car parts on credit(something our brothers from West Africa are currently not doing as they insist on cash upfront)

So all the best to you this industry is not as complicated as you think.Expect returns of more than 100%…industry would suit diasporans.

Good luck

Children’s party is one of the most dearly event for a parent. It could be for various occasions like the birthday party, baptism, graduation, and other such events such as the festive season which the parents may want to celebrate. The key aspects of a children’s birthday party are the Decoration, gifts, entertainment and food & drinks. One may choose to do this business covering all the three aspects and may call himself as an end to end organizer of parties. The other option is to just specialise in any of the three and have contacts with the party organizer and grow the business thru various party organizers.

MARKET:
The market for the party are wide range of parents who want to just enjoy with their kids and are too tied up to make arrangements. It will be an ever existing market and it is difficult to size it as every household may differ in amount they want to spend on each party.

CLIENT:
The client are the kid’s parents interested in availing this service. As it is a service oriented business, client satisfaction is a key in the business. Also it is very important to ensure that the clients call up repeatedly for more business and refer to others for organizing the party.

Requirements for Children’s party business:

Following are the list of mandatory elements for beginning the business:
Business License
Photos of party themes
Business Phone and Cell Phone

Following are the list of optional elements:
Franchise connection: This is not critical. Having a franchise helps in getting the knowhow of the business. There are quite a few firms who run as a franchisee.
Vehicle with Cargo space
Shop or Office of choice to show case the party themes.

Apart from the above, one needs to have lots and lots of creativity.

How to go about the business:

– Develop business relationships with vendors, suppliers, caterers and entertainers. Negotiate a standard fee of using their services.
– Plan and collect themes that would be offered to clients. Fix the prices of the themes which would have to be competitive to the market rates.
– Ensure that the unique selling point of the business is identified and communicated to all the prospective clients.
– Plan the games and gifts in line with the themes so as to make the event memorable.
– Innovate and try to perform something new in every party so that the clients don’t see repetition every time.
– Initially pitch on to various existing business owners who may subcontract the party organizing activity during their busy schedule. This would lead to having the first set of clients. The clients may thereafter refer to other clients wanting to organize the party.
– Understand the requirement of the client and the budget within which the party has to be conducted.
– Focus on maintaining good relationships with the clients and the other business owners.
– Attend all the party and enjoy with the kids. This will show the level of engagement and seriousness in the party.
– Promote the business by every possible means i.e. through flyers, facebook or Youtube etc.

In Zimbabwe we have the irresistible, the famous ‘Mazowe Crush Fruit Juice’ ..how about Malawi? In Malawi it’s the World Best Rice…It’s the Malawi Rice…Kilombero Rice. If you have not eaten Malawi Rice then ‘you are still to eat rice’.

So I had heard stories of this famous rice and dismissed them. I thought folks this rice was overrated, I have eaten Thai Rice and various other types of rice. There is nothing much that distinguishes the rice’s that I had eaten.

Now after eating the famous rice from the beautiful country of Malawi, iam forced to change my stance. Malawi rice is indeed the best rice under the sun…I just got hooked to this rice and donot see myself ever wanting to eat any rice apart from Malawi Rice.

Now it makes sense why this rice is expensive in Harare, a 2kg of Malawi Rice costs $5. Normal rice costs between $2 and $3 per 2kg packet. Malawi rice is definitely not for the poor!

So what exactly makes it special? Unfortunately Iam not a food writer and will not do justice to this famous brand. All I can say is that its tasty…add to this, the sweet scent that comes from the cooked rice. You can smell from a mile away that at this home –they are eating Kilombero rice tonight!

Business Opportunities provided by Malawi Rice

More should be done to market and promote Malawi Rice. Malawi rice is a world brand and the rice should be served in all the top hotels in the world. In Zimbabwe and South Africa, few hotels prepare Malawi rice and this maybe partly due to ignorance. If advertised well the demand for this rice is unlimited.

So what is ZBIN Doing?

Do you supply Kilombero Rice? If your answer is yes, then drop your details on the comments section.

We encourage Malawians in Zimbabwe, South Africa and other countries to put their details so that potential customers can easily contact you.

Malawi Rice Recipe

Some say the trick with Malawi rice lies in the recipe, few non Malawians know how to expertly cook Kilombero rice. We are therefore inviting folks with recipes for Malawi to please post below.

As for me and my family-if its not Kilombero rice, then its technically not rice-Viva Malawi Rice!

Monday is a wrong day to talk about laziness, its still a long week hey? Anyway good morning investors  and may you allow me to talk about business advice for the lazy types amongst us. The couch potato’s who prefer sleeping or doing little activity.

Become a distributor

Becoming a distributor is the easiest business advice we can give you. No need for complex or strategic thinking skills. All you need is to sign up with an established company and distribute their goods and services. A few months ago I was in East Asia where I saw a lot of brands of various goods.

The brands that I saw were of the following products

1)Mobile phones and accessories

2)Agricultural equipment products

3)Clothes and shoes

4)Perfumes and deodorants

5)Household furniture

6)Electrical and solar products

7) Kitchenware

Dear reader, the list is endless. I did not know that there are more than hundred phone brands! I was used to Samsung, I-phones, Nokia, Black Berry etc. I did not know that the list extends to more than 100! So if you are the lazy type, get busy on the net and find out how to be a distributor of various products that are manufactured in Asia, Europe and USA.

The difficult part

Apologies for misrepresentation-there is no room in business for lazy people lol. After obtaining information about products to distribute you have to do one thing-work hard to promote the products that you would have chosen.

Bringing a new product is not as easy it sounds as you will be competing with established brands. You will have to work hard to get a share of the market. In certain cases the manufacturers may help in the marketing and distribution of their products.

Next week I will provide you with a list of manufacturers you can contact. Also take note of the fact that you may need to pay certain fees in order to obtain exclusive distributor rights.

So its back to work this week and as ZBIN we wish you the best.

So we have reached 10,000 visitors on our website? Excellent stuff, thank you very much forum members for the support getting website hits is not an easy thing especially when it’s a website that majors on business. Business by its nature is normally a hard-sell on social media forums. So getting 10,000 visitors in 18 days is an impressive record with an average of 500 visitors per day.

ZBIN Newsletter: We are currently working on designing a newsletter that will summarise all ZBIN Forum discussions, file them and distribute to all of you on a bi-monthly basis. An opportunity created for all of you interested in adverts and having business news in one place. In future do look forward to a ZBIN App that enables all members to have up to date business information at a click of a button. The App should be coming in the next 3 months.

Rabbit Week

You may have seen my advert inviting members to join the ZBIN Rabbit Group, yes we have formed a Rabbit Group and all members who registered will be added to the group by end of week. We are hoping to revive interest by Zimbos is raising rabbits on a commercial basis. One area we are going to closely work on is the market for rabbit meat. We hope to help publicise and create new markets for rabbits. We are hoping to work together as a group in creating demand and also provide supply of rabbit meat.

Mozambique Group

All is in order for the Mozambique trip in a few weeks’ time. We already have a checklist to help members in the preparation of the trip. We have 25 forum members travelling to Tete for business explorations. Thanks to Clara Mapfumo and the rest of the Moz Opportunities group. We are no longer accepting applications for space on the travelling team.

After the Tete trip we will arrange another trip to Moz and it maybe to Beira or Chimoio. All logistics for the second trip to be done after the Tete tour. The Chimoio trip might be a day trip where we leave Harare at 3:00am arriving at Forbes Border Post at 6:00am and be in Chimoio by 8/9:00am. We will spend 4/5 hours before coming back and be in Harare by 10:00pm. The aim of the trip will be for forum members to appreciate business developments in neighbouring countries, doing so with the aim of taking advantage of possible business opportunities.

Online Forex Trading

We are going to have a forum competition on dummy operations. All members are encouraged to have opened dummy accounts where we are going to have a competition and the winner will be featured on this website. The aim of the competition is to enable members to develop confidence in the operation of Meta Trader 4 App which allows members to trade online forex. Our Group policy remains that members must trade  online forex on their own. No middlemen allowed to trade on behalf of anyone.

Cape Town Group Revived

We are planning to have a meeting for all Zimbo Capetonians in mid Dacember. Registration of the members is in progress and Rodwell Maoneke is in charge with logistics for the second ZBIN meeting in the Mother City.

Upcoming Posts

1. Truck Inn Opportunities along Zimbabwe’s Highways
2. Rabbit Market
3. Source of Second hand vehicles car parts
4. Shire River Port
5. Interview with a sister based in Pemba, Mozambique
6. Sugar Beans Farming
7. Peri-Urban areas opportunities
8. Indian Start Ups
9. Tourism Opportunities
10. Import Substitution Opportunities.

ZBIN Networking Event

We are holding a ZBIN Social gathering event this Friday at Paramount in Hatfield, Harare.  No fees charged you just get in touch and we will socialise and discuss business. I will be providing you  with more details about this event during the week.