A shop owner in Chabahil told us he had been stocking an imported peanut butter for two years and had never once met anyone from the company that made it. He bought from a guy, who bought from another guy, who imported it. Nobody in that line could tell him where the jar was made, and nobody in it had ever promised him what his margin would be.
That is the actual problem with sourcing peanut butter in Nepal right now. The category is growing fast, especially with gym-going and health-conscious customers, so there is no shortage of people willing to sell you cartons. Very few of them can tell you who makes the thing, or stand behind the number you earn on it.
So before you commit shelf space and cash, here is what a smart buyer should check. यो checklist कुनै एक brand को लागि होइन, कुनै पनि supplier मा लगाउन सक्नुहुन्छ.
1. "तपाईं आफैं बनाउनुहुन्छ कि किनेर बेच्नुहुन्छ?"
Ask this in the first two minutes. The answer changes everything else.
If the supplier is the manufacturer, or a distributor the manufacturer appointed, they can tell you exactly where the factory is, and they will usually be happy for you to come see it. They can explain why they use one ingredient over another. They can tell you what terms you are actually getting, because those terms come from the maker.
If the supplier is an anonymous reseller or a sub-dealer who picked the stock up somewhere down the line, there is a markup already baked in before your quote, and nobody has committed to what is left for you. Sometimes there are two such layers. The money has to come from somewhere, and it comes from your margin.
There is a quick test. Ask for the manufacturing address and the manufacturer's own contact. A supplier working with the maker gives it instantly. Someone protecting a position in the middle gets vague, or tells you the factory "doesn't deal with small shops."
Lokah Foods manufactures in Pepsicola, Kathmandu, and supplies shops through distributors we appoint ourselves in major cities across Nepal. That layer is not an accident of the market, it is how we get stock close to your shop, and its terms are ours. You can read more about how we set that up on our about page, or the whole stocking process in how to stock Lokah in your shop. If you want to walk through the facility, ask.
2. Margin: what is actually realistic
Here is the uncomfortable math most retailers already know. On a lot of imported FMCG, a shop ends up with roughly 10 to 15 percent off MRP. That is not the supplier being cruel, it is just what is left after customs duty, freight, an importer, a national distributor and sometimes a valley sub-dealer have each taken a slice, with nobody responsible for the remainder.
So the question to ask a supplier is not "how many middlemen are there." It is "who guarantees my number, and does it change if I get handed to somebody else next quarter." A local distributor who carries stock in your city is worth having. What you do not want is a margin that depends on which distributor you land with or how hard you negotiated that day.
Lokah मा retailer margin MRP मा १५% भन्दा माथि protected छ, र त्यो floor कुन distributor ले supply गर्छ भन्नेमा भर पर्दैन. It is enforced across the network. On a 1kg All Natural jar at an MRP of Rs 925, that floor is at least Rs 138.75 in your till, and where you land above it depends on your distributor and your order pattern.
When you compare two quotes, do not compare per-kg price alone. Work out the rupee profit per jar at MRP, and then work out how many jars you need to sell to make the shelf space worth it. A cheaper wholesale price on a product with a low MRP can leave you worse off per jar than a slightly costlier product with a higher MRP and a real brand pull.
We wrote out the full margin comparison, including why the percentage number alone can mislead you, in FMCG peanut butter margins in Nepal. To find out how your shop would be supplied and what your rate looks like, start on the bulk page.
3. DFTQC certified छ भन्छ। Proof देखाउन सक्छ?
Almost every supplier will say the product is DFTQC certified. Some are telling the truth. The useful question is not whether they claim it, but whether you can verify it without taking their word.
Three things to ask for:
The registration itself. DFTQC is Nepal's Department of Food Technology and Quality Control, and a registered food product has a paper trail. A supplier who cannot produce it, or who sends you a photo of a certificate with the product name cropped out, has told you something.
Lab reports you can actually read. Not "we get it tested," but the document, with the tested value, the safe range, the method and the batch it came from. A certificate proves the company cleared an approval at some point. A report proves somebody measured something and is willing to show you the number.
Traceability on the jar itself. Certification and lab work sit at the company level. What protects you at the counter is being able to look up the specific jar in a customer's hand and see when it was made and what went into it.
Lokah is DFTQC certified, and our products are also independently tested at a private Nepal-standard lab, a second set of eyes outside the government process. Every report we hold is published publicly at lokah.com.np/reports, with the batch number, the tested value, the safe range, the test method and a scan of the original document.
We will be straight about the limit of that. We do not lab test every single batch, because at our current scale the cost of doing so is not realistic. That is exactly why what we do publish matters: it is the real set of reports, not a curated shelf arranged to look like full coverage. Ask any supplier who implies total coverage to show you the documents, and see what arrives.
What is true of every jar, with no exceptions, is the QR code. Scan it, or type the batch code at /verify, and you get that batch's ingredient traceability, where each ingredient was sourced, purchase dates, supplier cities, along with the production and best-before dates, plus a link through to any lab report published for that product. Your customer can do that standing in your shop. If you want the longer explanation of what the certification actually covers and what it does not, read what DFTQC certification means.
4. Order size, delivery र payment terms
This is where a lot of otherwise good suppliers become a headache for a small shop.
Order size. A large distributor's minimum order is often set for supermarket-sized buyers, which means a kirana pasal has to buy three months of stock to get in the door. That is cash sitting on a shelf. Ask whether the minimum is per variety or total, and whether you can mix varieties and jar sizes in one order. A first order you can actually sell through beats a first order that ties up your cash. With Lokah, your distributor, or we ourselves where no distributor covers you yet, will size that first order to your shop and confirm delivery.
Delivery. Ask specifically: delivered to my shop, or do I collect? Same-day, next-day, or "next week"? Who do I call when it hasn't arrived? Having a distributor who is already routing deliveries through your area usually answers that question better than a warehouse three districts away, which is the main reason we supply through local distributors rather than running every carton in the country out of one dispatch line. Where nobody covers your area yet, we ship to your address ourselves, anywhere in Nepal.
Payment. Be honest with yourself about credit. उधारो feels like a good deal until you realise the credit cost is priced into your rate. If a supplier offers you 90 day credit and a thin margin, you are paying for that credit whether you use it or not. Ask what the terms are and what they are costing you, and get them from whoever is actually supplying you rather than a rate card someone forwarded.
Reorder friction. Test it early. Message them when you are half out of stock, not fully out, and see how long the reply takes. A supplier you can reach on Viber or Facebook and get a same-day answer from is worth real money over a year.
5. Shelf life and batch consistency
Two things quietly decide whether peanut butter becomes a repeat line in your shop or a slow-moving jar you stop reordering.
Shelf life and freshness at delivery. Lokah peanut butter has a 12 month shelf life from manufacturing. But shelf life is not the number that matters most, freshness on arrival is. Stock that travelled through an importer's godown and then a national distributor's warehouse can reach you with a third of its life already gone. A product made in Nepal and moved through a short chain does not lose those months. Always look at the manufacturing date on delivery, not only the expiry.
Consistency. A customer who liked the jar last month will buy again only if this month's jar tastes the same. Natural peanut butter separates, that is normal and not a defect. What is not normal is one carton tasting roasted and sweet and the next tasting flat, or oil content swinging visibly between batches. That is a sign of loose process control, and it kills repeat purchase quietly, because customers do not complain, they just stop buying.
If you want to stock a variety your customers can actually taste-test, our range is three varieties, each in creamy and crunchy, with the full list and current MRP on products. The All Natural one is 100% peanuts with nothing added, which is the jar to reach for when a customer asks what has no sugar in it.
All Natural Peanut Butter - Creamy
100% peanuts, nothing added - the label-reader's jar
From Rs 285 · Shop now
The Classic American and Chocolate contain sugar, salt and GMS as a stabiliser, all printed on the label. Across the whole range there is no palm oil, no soybean or sunflower or canola oil, no artificial preservatives and no hydrogenated fat, which is a genuinely useful thing to be able to tell a customer who reads labels.
6. Ask whether they will help you sell it
The last question separates a supplier from a partner. A carton dropped at your door is a transaction. Ask whether they will arrange a taste trial before your first order, whether they can tell you which variant moves fastest in a shop like yours, and whether someone picks up the phone when a customer asks you a question you cannot answer.
Run this checklist on every quote you get. Some suppliers will pass it, some won't, and the ones that do will mostly be the ones who can name the factory and commit to your margin. If you want to run it on us, the enquiry form and our contact details are on the bulk page, or call 9851406394, or write to lfrcnp@gmail.com and tell us what your shop needs. We will tell you which distributor covers your area, or ship to you directly until one does.