A Simple Question in Lagos Exposed a Big Gap in Baby Food Businesses

These were business owners creating products for babies. Their customers were mothers. Their products were being positioned as part of a child's early nutrition journey.

So, during the session, I asked a few simple questions.

If a mother buys your product, can you explain how much she should give her baby? At what month should she introduce it? How should the quantity change as the baby grows?

Many agrifood SMEs focus heavily on production, branding, packaging, pricing, and distribution. These are important. A product must look good, reach the market, and make business sense.

But when the product is food, especially food for infants and young children, the business must also be grounded in basic nutrition knowledge.

A mother does not only need to know that a baby food product is “healthy” or “nutritious.” She needs clear guidance. She needs to know when to start, how much to give, how often to feed, and how the product fits into her child's overall diet.

If the founder cannot explain this, the sales team cannot explain it well. If the sales team cannot explain it well, the customer may misuse the product. And when baby food is misused, the impact goes far beyond customer dissatisfaction. It can affect trust, child nutrition, and the credibility of the entire business.

That Lagos session opened my eyes to something I now see across the agrifood sector more broadly. Many SMEs are building food products without nutrition-informed systems behind them.

A nutrition-informed system means the business understands the nutritional role of its product and builds that understanding into product development, labelling, customer education, sales messaging, staff training, and market communication.

For formulated complementary baby food companies, this matters even more. The product enters a sensitive stage of life. The customer is making decisions for a child who cannot speak for themselves. The founder carries a responsibility to make sure the product is not only available and affordable, but properly understood.

This is why, at Impacter Solutions, nutrition-informed systems have become one of our core services for agrifood MSMEs. We help food businesses connect product quality with nutrition knowledge, customer education, and responsible market positioning.

Growth in agrifood should not only be measured by how many units are sold. It should also be measured by how well the product serves the people it was created for.

For baby food companies, that means serving mothers with clarity, and serving babies with care.

If you are building an agrifood product and want to strengthen the nutrition knowledge behind your business, this is the kind of system worth building early, not after the gap shows up in a room full of your own founders.