Neo Dadani (24) and Oarabile Setime (27) will in the future be counted amongst the few young Batswana who developed a thick skin and went into the ever challenging meat processing business.
The duo, owns a company dubbed Royal M’s which is trading as Meat Hive. Meat Hive, which is located in Mogoditshane near the SSKB BDF Camp is a 100 percent citizen owned company which sells meat cuts (Beef, Chicken, Pork and Goat), boerewors, minced meat, beef patties and biltong that are all prepared in their premises.
Dadani is not just a Hospitality and Sustainable Tourism Graduate from Botho University. He is also an alumnus of the Women in Business Botswana. The Mahalapye native says growing up her dream was to become a successful business woman and that her passion for entrepreneurship is the one that has kept her going despite the many challenges they face.
While Meat Hive opened its doors in September 2020, it started its operations by supplying live cattle to a number of butcheries around Gaborone. The two business partners then stopped as it was proving to be difficult to do business with some butcheries. The decision was motivated by the fact that some of the clients were not consistent with payments.
To date, Meat Hive has a total of 7 employees, being a Business Development Officer who focuses more on the sales and marketing of the business, brand building and overall development of the business. A Store Supervisor whom ensures that everything runs smoothly and that everyone is doing their job as per expectations. A Sales Person responsible for selling their products, 2 Shop Assistants who assist in both sales and the production department and 2 Blockmans whom are both responsible for receiving , storing and cutting meat.
She says the kind of skills that one needs to have in order run a successful butchery business include management , financial and interpersonal skills but most importantly what one needs is resilience, hard work and patience because it is a very challenging industry to operate in.
According to Dadani some of the challenges that they encounter as a meat processing business are the fluctuating selling prices of beef carcasses due to the high demand & supply as well as exorbitant transportation costs due to the ever increasing fuel prices.
Meat Hive is surrounded by 3 other butcheries in their area which brings healthy competition.
“What separates us from them is our affordability, consistency and customer service. We also embrace digital transformation and new business trends in running our business,” she adds.
Dadani shares that the fact that they have provided employment to fellow citizens gives them enough motivation to keep pushing. She notes that their business environment is great because of their employees whom she describes as wonderful people who make the running of the business seem easy.
She also says their plan is to move from being a traditional butchery to a modern one. “We have a lot of projects going on and we want to officially launch this business as a modern butchery with lots of products during the last quarter of the year,” she notes.
Dadani says they built this business from their personal savings and that it might have taken them some time but at the end of it all they managed to grow it to where it is now.
In order to assist start-ups to grow Dadani has this advice for the government of Botswana, “business on paper is different from business on the ground therefore, government must deploy its officers from the Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) to be close to business operators so that they are able to pick start up needs promptly.” She also says there must be a provision for business counsellors, “ko re ka llelang teng ka gore nako tse dingwe go thata” meaning were they can seek professional help as business gets really tough at times.
For more on their prices and promotions visit their Facebook and Instagram pages: Meat Hive Butchery or call : +267 76035314.
