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Every day, Sweet Sensation’s two dozen or more restaurants serve a wide variety of dishes to their hungry, treat seeking customers. They fill bellies with a mouthwatering assortment of foods representing the local culinary heritage and international tastes. It wants its visitors to know what it means for the Nigerian eba and eforiro to sit smugly at the meal table, just beside the Italian pasta and sauce.

Maybe it’s safe to assume that Sweet Sensation has convinced many that its dishes are worth serial stopovers at its restaurants. What other plausible explanation is there for its longevity, in an industry that’s bursting at the seams with tough competitors?

It’s no mean feat staying up for over two decades in the quick service restaurant business. It’s even more impressive when a business in the sector is growing enough to be able to offer over 60 different dishes in all its outlets, as Sweet Sensation’s communications’ people say it does. For a long while now, diners at its tables have smacked their lips after consuming its dishes, pastries, fries and chicken specials. Their satisfaction with the meals there has kept this pioneering venture going.

But it wasn’t always obvious that Sweet Sensation would become the big brand that it now is. When Kehinde Kamson kicked started it up in 1994, she was simply running it as a side hustle. It was a small bakery in her garage, a far cry from the fine, lit up structures that house its branches these days. But she shaped and prodded it through its first few years; in time, it expanded and began to launch in multiple locations.

Sweet Sensation’s restaurants serve a wide and ever-growing range of foods, and they’re always happy to point this out whenever they can. You’ll find anything from french fries and spring rolls to coconut rice and bean porridge. Regular edibles like white rice and tomato stew are usually available, as are less well-known chicken based recipes. Continental and oriental cuisines are represented as well.

Over time, Sweet Sensation has diversified its products, which it offers to the public through its sub-brands. One of these arms, OMG Cakes, sells cakes of various kinds, for private consumption and public events. Another, Sweet Scoop, vends ice cream in branded cones, cups and bowls. And an outdoor catering service, Sweet Serve, attends to clients’ food needs at outdoor and corporate events.

There’s a subunit which takes care of Sweet Sensation’s delivery business. Go Sensation, as it’s called, dispatches breakfast, launch and dinner to individual customers, and supplies meals for seminars, conferences and other formal events. This allows its parent company to deliver customers’ orders free of charge, and within its own time frames.

This brand powers on in an era of rapid change and disruption. There are others in its industry which strive with it for a greater share of the quick-service restaurant market; but Sweet Sensation continues to grow, reflecting the energy, renewal and freshness that its trademark orange, yellow and green colours stand for.

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This article was first published on 26th November 2018

ikenna-nwachukwu

Ikenna Nwachukwu holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He loves to look at the world through multiple lenses- economic, political, religious and philosophical- and to write about what he observes in a witty, yet reflective style.