How Zayith Food Company tripled its retail footprint in 6 months with DALA

Zayith Food Company produces packaged food products targeting the growing Nigerian middle-class consumer segment: products that are well-packaged, clearly labelled, and priced for modern trade. The brand had done the hard work of getting NAFDAC certification, investing in packaging, and building initial consumer demand. What they didn't have was a reliable way to get those products onto the shelves where their target consumer shops.

Their Brand Manager's challenge was a classic distribution bottleneck: the product was ready, the market was there, but converting demand into consistent shelf presence required operational capacity that wasn't practical to build in-house at their stage.

For a brand at Zayith's stage, going from 50 stores to 175 sounds simple until you calculate what it actually requires. At minimum, you need people to visit each store regularly, track what's selling, ensure stock doesn't run out between visits, collect payments, and document problems as they occur. For 175 stores in Lagos and Ogun, that's a full-time field sales team of at least 5–7 people, plus a logistics operation, plus a payment follow-up process — before you've spent a single naira on the things that actually make the brand better.

Zayith chose a different path: partner with DALA and use that operational infrastructure instead of building it from scratch.

DALA's approach with Zayith started with a store mapping exercise — identifying which stores in Lagos and Ogun were highest-priority based on location, category fit, and consumer profile. Rather than spreading thin across any store that would take the product, DALA's team curated the initial placement to maximise velocity.

From there, DALA managed the full store onboarding process: first-delivery documentation, proper shelf placement, price tag setup, and buyer relationship establishment. Regular field visits tracked sell-through at each location. When a store's stock dropped below threshold, a restock order was triggered without anyone at Zayith having to follow up.

The reporting output — delivered bi-weekly — gave Zayith's Brand Manager visibility into exactly which stores were performing, which weren't, and why. That level of insight is typically only available to brands with dedicated retail intelligence teams.

Within 6 months of the DALA partnership, Zayith Food Company had 175 active retail stores — three times their previous distribution footprint, reached without adding a single in-house sales person. The brand's Brand Manager describes the outcome as not just a store count but a structural change: the brand now has data to make better decisions about where to invest in marketing, which categories are gaining traction, and where to push for more store presence in the next phase.

The 175-store network is now a foundation rather than a ceiling. With DALA managing execution, Zayith can focus on what a brand should focus on: product quality, consumer marketing, and growth strategy.