Zviad Grdzelidze, the founder of the fruit porridge manufacturing company "Baia Food" talks about the challenges of small enterprises and notes that in the process of dealing with difficulties, the price of their products has increased by 22-23%.
According to him, cooperation with large chain supermarkets is a big burden and only a single small enterprise can handle it.
"The main challenge is the cooperation with retail chain supermarkets, this is an extremely large burden for small enterprises. In particular, the chain supermarkets have increased the entry fee, cashback, and registration fee a lot. This makes the products more expensive by at least 20-25%.
There are many financing programs for creating an enterprise, however, no one cares about the realization of its production anymore, I am not saying that the state should help the enterprise in sales, although some kind of benefits would be good", - says Zviad Grdzelidze.
He also notes that the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine War and inflation have hurt businesses a lot and forced them to increase the price of their products.
"The price of fruits and various raw materials has increased significantly, this is true not only in Georgia but also in the world. We do not only use local products, we have to export some of them. The pandemic, then the Russia-Ukraine war and inflation affected us significantly, and the prices on our products are up by about 22-23% ,"- says the founder of "Baia Food".
The company currently produces 25 types of fruit porridge, and in the near future, it plans to produce up to 30 tons of fruit snacks.
