By Benjamin Njoku

Following reports that the consumer food sector recorded 13.5 billion in sales in 2023 and 3 billion was in street food, Creator of Street Foodz Naija, Mr Femi Ogundoro, has called for the branding and positioning of street food vendors in Nigeria to enable their businesses scale.

Ogundoro said the over 100 million Nigerians below poverty line are dependent on the meals prepared by street food vendors, but lamented that in spite of that, the food vendors struggle.

Addressing newsmen at the unveiling of season 5 of Street Foodz Naija, Ogundoro, however, expressed optimism that things were changing, noting that previous seasons of the show were held to enable street food vendors to scale their businesses.

He said: “Street Food Naija is a platform that is particularly dear to my heart because you have a lot of Nigerians relying on these guys, and we don’t respect that. I feel in the last four years, we have been able to work with one another, reposition the way they are perceived. According to reports, we have probably 132 million or right now 152 million Nigerians living below the poverty line who cannot prepare their own meals. If they can’t prepare their meals, they are depending on certain persons to prepare those meals for them. And these are the street food vendors.

“These street food vendors, in the last couple of decades, are not people with whom you want to really be associated with. We love their food, but we know that in terms of branding and positioning, those businesses don’t even scale. But things have changed since we started Street Food Naija. We see a lot of these people doing great things. Pre-Street Food, you probably had them struggling. Street Food Naija is about value creation. It’s about creating employment, an alternative source of income for people, so that one way or the other, they can stand by themselves.

“We have started calling for entry and it will end on September 23. The show itself kicks off in October. In October, we will make the announcement. For this season, you will be able to watch it on YouTube and television stations across the country. It will run on Saturdays and Sundays over a seven-week period. The grand finale comes up on November 16 in Lagos.” Meanwhile, FoodBay TV will be hosting the docu-reality cooking series, Street Foodz Naija Season 5 with the ultimate winner smiling home with a cash prize of N10,000,000. The judges for this season are food blogger Chef Tolani, Chinonso Egemba, better known as Aproko Doctor, and food consultant, Opeyemi Famakin, while the host is influencer Enioluwa Adeoluwa.