Besides family, South African restaurateur Yente Pienaar shares something else in common with world tennis legend Roger Federer.
And that is the word ‘serve’, which she does well in her restaurant, far from the flashy center courts of Wimbledon.
A second cousin to Federer, 29-year-old Pienaar owns and runs the Meet on Milner restaurant on Milner Street in the heart of Waterkloof in South Africa’s capital Pretoria.
On any given day, the place is teeming with locals and diplomats – few know she is related to tennis’ numero uno.
“I wouldn’t say people come here because of who I am related to. Like only some people know we are second cousins. I have only seen [Roger Federer] twice. He has never been here but my aunt and uncle [his parents] have a couple of times,” says Pienaar.
Multi-faceted, as a young student, she won entrepreneur of the year at her high school, the Saint Mary’s Diocesan School for Girls, Pretoria. Today, she has the drive and savvy to compete with any man in the restaurant business.
Meet on Milner is a sophisticated meeting place covered floor-to-ceiling with art, bringing to life the quiet, sleepy street and neighborhood it is located in.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/09/14/from-pizzas-to-pizzaz/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">From Pizzas To Pizzaz</a>
Born and raised in Kwaggafontein, in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province, Pienaar combined her love for cooking, fashion and photography to start her restaurant at the age of 25.
“My mom hated cooking. In the evenings, we would have a choice between toasties or avo on toast. So I got really fed up, and would trade my McDonald’s for cucumber sandwiches. Then I just started making my own food and then later started my own herb garden,” says Pienaar.
This love for cooking continued into her high school years. Pienaar was never one to settle for the ordinary, she would always use her skills to make life better and brighter.
“Even though I went to a nice boarding school, the food could get boring, so I always [enhanced] my food by buying stuff from Pick n Pay. I would always have extra stuff so people would come to me and say, ‘please, like spice up my dish’.”
With an upbringing that advocated imagination and a go-getter’s attitude, Pienaar had dreams and the zeal to fulfill them.
“I always knew when I was small that I wanted to be the editor of Vogue and I wanted to have a restaurant. Those were the two things on my list. So I have got a restaurant now, and it’s been four years,” says Pienaar.
Next on her list is to be an editor, and she is determined.
“I went to TUKS where I studied visual communications. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do but I knew I wanted to go into the arts field. Then I did my honors in drama and film, and that’s another thing I really like and I would like to make a film one day. Creative art directing is what I like.”
The same passion Federer has for the racket, she has for the ladle.
Her restaurant is an amalgamation of two outlets that were earlier a tea room and a 75-year-old pharmacy.
“When I was working at a guest house, I would always drive by the tea room and think this was just a great location.
“I came here with my mother and told her there was such potential. Then I spoke to my parents and told them that I don’t know how this all works, could they help me with a loan, and then they said they would see,” says Pienaar.
It took Pienaar two visits before she could strike a deal with the owners of the tea room. At first, the price was too high and Pienaar left with no deal but she was not ready to give up.
As she traveled back and forth to work daily, she could see the shop was getting emptier attracting fewer customers. It was then Pienaar went to put her offer on the table again.
After being persistent, the owners of the tea room finally gave in to her offer and she began the renovation process.
With the help of her parents, she started her restaurant.
“They are like my bank, my interest-free bank,” she says.
However, Pienaar was not done. After opening up Meet on Milner, she asked the owner of the chemist next door to sell her his store if he ever retired.
“I thought he would retire in maybe two or three years but he came back to me about five months later and told me he is ready to retire. I was shocked and I sure wasn’t ready financially but I knew I wanted the space, and so did many other people, so I bought it.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/08/04/pots-pans-passion/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pots, Pans And Passion</a>
Meet on Milner attracts the residents of Waterkloof and diplomats from the embassies nearby.
“The food and the service are just different from other restaurants. Your meal always looks different from the last one you had which makes it taste like a new experience every time,” says Beau van Zyl, one of the regulars here.
“I love how the staff takes time to know us, even Yente. And as you can see they even have linen table cloths which you just don’t see anymore,” adds Claudia Dalebout, another regular customer.
Pienaar now plans on incorporating more theme events at the restaurant, such as ‘singles mingle’, as she met her boyfriend here. And then some.
“I love Johannesburg and I would love to expand into Johannesburg. Maybe the next year or so, I could have a ‘Meet on…’ on any street,” adds Pienaar on her future plans.
“I guess the next challenge for me is to become the editor of Vogue. I think Africa needs a Vogue, don’t you?” she says, with a smile.
More hits than misses, Pienaar seems to be making all the right moves.  &#8211; Written by Keketso Majoe

The Link Between Federer And Food

He appears to be soft-hearted behind his infectious smile, but this is a steely franchise mogul who has survived being stripped of all his assets.
On a gloomy day, as gloomy as his worst day, we arrive in Mamelodi, Pretoria, South Africa’s capital, to meet Itumeleng Mpatlanyana.
At the corner of Shabangu and Maake Street in Mamelodi West, is a shisa nyama (township braai restaurant) made with a shipping container painted shocking red. This is Nkukhu-Box, one of his many businesses.
The atmosphere is vibrant. There is deafening house music playing at the restaurant – we had to ask people to turn it down. The street buzzes with taxis and hooting cars.
Finally, 40 minutes late, a white BMW sports car pulls up. It looks out of place, as well as tardy.
A short and soft-spoken gentleman, in a white shirt, emerges. Mpatlanyana, the food man, is ready to speak about his worst day.
For someone seen as successful, it comes as a surprise that seven years ago Mpatlanyana found himself sitting on the floor of his near empty house. The only thing he was able to save from the repossessors was a painting on the wall.
“There was one painting that I bought when I was a student. I actually begged the guys not to take it and I still have it today,” he says.
“It is a happy colorful painting. When you look at that painting in the mornings, it gives new life and meaning. So that is why I begged the guys not to take it. They took everything, but that painting was the only survivor that day.”
This was how bankruptcy felt.
It all began when he was 14 years old, growing up in the township of Embalenhle, in Mpumalanga. He had started a lawn-mowing business in his neighborhood at weekends. His motivation was money for a nice packed lunch.
“Having a tastier lunch meant that I could hang out and trade my lunch with more privileged pupils who were perceived as being cool at school.”
<div id="attachment_31360" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31360" class="wp-image-31360 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Itumeleng-MWD-001-1024x686.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="686" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Itumeleng-MWD-001.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Itumeleng-MWD-001-300x201.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Itumeleng-MWD-001-600x402.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Itumeleng-MWD-001-768x515.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />From rock bottom to rolling in cash</div>
While his fancy lunchbox brought him a sense of belonging, his business brought a sense of wealth. He branched out into the food business selling cheese, polony and bacon throughout high school.
With a taste for business, Mpatlanyana then studied a BCom in entrepreneurship at the University of Pretoria.
As a student he sold beanbag furniture to students. He also bought his first car – a 1979 VW Beetle – that he used to transport students.
“The business was successful. At one point I had 20 apartments under my portfolio, but none were owned by me,” he says.
The money rolled in and the friends came with ideas.
In 2008, he and his friend bought Fashion TV Café, a French television channel franchise. He thought it was gold for the grandchildren.
“When we became Fashion TV Café’s first young black franchisees in the world, we were in our twenties and it was a hell of an achievement,” says Mpatlanyana.
It all seemed plain sailing; but the exorbitant rent and overhead costs were to make a meal of them. Mpatlanyana lost his R3.3 million ($252,000) investment. The thought of losing everything was always his biggest fear.
Soon he was to experience his worst nightmare.
“That day I thought, colorful s*** just hit the fan, and it is looking beautiful. I was accepting defeat, because I knew it was coming and I knew I could do it again.”
First, the repossessors came.
“Those guys park their truck and they knock at your door, thereafter they just walk in and they just start taking stuff without negotiating, because it’s a done deal, the courts have given them the order,” says Mpatlanyana.
“I actually helped them to move the furniture, because I tried to make the experience as comfortable as I could. I was not fighting them, I wasn’t crying. I was like, ‘It went bad sharp-sharp, moja (fine), take it.’”
Reality kicked in when he was alone and bereft.
“The tears came later, after they left, when I was sitting on the floor.”
“The remote control is gone, the TV is gone and the ironing board is gone. I was just sitting there asking myself, what was I going to do next? But I knew then, that I could do it again bigger and better,” recalls Mpatlanyana.
“That was the lowest moment of my life. I would sit on the floor with no furniture or anything, wondering where did it all go wrong? At one point you were rolling in cash and all of a sudden, you have hit rock bottom,” he says.
The fear of people was stronger than the fear of loss.
“It’s was not even about the money, it was about the people that knew me and how they would look at me. A few weeks ago, you had this upmarket restaurant and the ladies love you, then all of a sudden, you have zero.”
“How do you even get your friends to come visit you again, if you have no furniture in the house? Your bank accounts are all cleaned up,” says Mpatlanyana
A phone call changed his fortunes four months later.
“I don’t know whether to call it luck or whether it was just my work ethic that came through for me because a customer who happened to be a coalmine owner who was looking for a BEE partner decided to call me. Instantly, I became part of a small mine operation,” Mpatlanyana says with relief in his voice.
<div id="attachment_31398" style="width: 696px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31398" class="wp-image-31398 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/06/Itumeleng-MWD-048-686x1024.jpg" alt="" width="686" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Itumeleng-MWD-048.jpg 686w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Itumeleng-MWD-048-300x448.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Itumeleng-MWD-048-600x896.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Itumeleng-MWD-048-201x300.jpg 201w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Itumeleng-MWD-048-768x1147.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 686px) 100vw, 686px" />&#8221;A few weeks ago, you had this upmarket restaurant and the ladies were loving you, then all of a sudden, you have zero.&#8221;</div>
“He could have called any other black man, but he called me, because he saw my work ethic and the amount of hard work I had put into FTV Café.”
His journey with the mining company was not long. Four years later, the coalmine was sold. He went back into the food business; his first love.
But this time, he was to do things differently. He would become the franchiser instead of the franchisee.
Spykos Foods was born in 2011, with R1 million ($76,000).
He founded a franchise that was about taking traditional township shisa nyama, fish and chips and bunny chow, into major malls and shopping centers in South Africa.
“You have to have a strong character to try again. I didn’t allow that to discourage me. I got up and I tried again.”
“I still went back into the food industry, the experience and what I learned out of the situation helped me to come up with the next brand. I decided to start my own brand, where I make my own rules and I don’t have to be dictated to by any franchise or international person that is in Paris,” says Mpatlanyana.
Forty Spykos Foods franchises were established around the country, but some collapsed.
“The stores started to close down due to several factors, but the main [reasons] were the escalating shopping center rentals, increase in food prices, especially fresh potatoes as this was our main product line.”
“There were also major competitors dominating the market… Some not so well-skilled franchisees and the lack of adequate infrastructure,” says Mpatlanyana.
Even with the punches that he took, he is adamant he’ll become a franchise mogul.
He launched his first Nkukhu-Box, selling chicken, in August 2016. It is a business that mitigates the rent and overheads of Spykos Foods with a red shipping container that doesn’t cost much.
To date, he has three stores in South Africa and plans to expand to Zambia, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland this year.
Mpatlanyana claims that his business is worth R6.5 million ($497,000).
“Being a young black entrepreneur has immense challenges in the private sector. I realized that in business you need to find a business model that doesn’t rely on too many external sources,” he says.
Seven years on from an empty house and empty bank account, his worst day, in many ways, made him.

Itumeleng-MWD-056

From Rock Bottom To Rolling In cash

At the age of 17, Gorgui N’doye, left home in Senegal to be an engineer in New York, but he ended up selling make-up to actors and opening the first Senegalese-French restaurant in Harlem. These days, in his late forties, the unlikely entrepreneur is back in Africa exporting peanuts to Asia.
In 2001, N’doye, who qualified as an electrical engineer from the City College of New York, worked as a salesperson in a company selling make-up to actors in the Big Apple.
“As I travelled Harlem to work there weren’t good restaurants around. I saw a business opportunity and decided to sell my shares at the company. I had contacts here and there, people know people, I worked with them in the build-up and opening of Patisserie des Ambassades in what we call Little Africa. It has been 16 years of hard work since then,” says N’doye.
“This business was needed; there was a demand for it from the African community. The Federal Government contributed 30 percent into the business.”
Many cast doubt on N’doye’s venture except his wife Ken Alice N’doye, who was a caterer making Senegalese food platters for birthdays and weddings.
“Of course people questioned my judgment but I just focused on my work because I believed it was a good thing. Now they know I am a hardworking person,” he says.
It took N’doye two years to get the restaurant at full steam. It was difficult.
“When we first came here in Frederick Douglass Boulevard, Harlem, in 2001, this area was bad, we were the first African restaurant in a gangster’s paradise,” says Ahmadou Ndiaye Jean, the restaurant’s manager who’s also Senegalese.
“In the seventies, Senegalese were the first Africans to land in downtown Manhattan. Most were taxi drivers; they were almost the only daring ones to move into Harlem, then undermined by drugs and criminality. But the rent was cheap. In the late nineties a new wave of other nationalities joined in. At the end of the decade federal authorities revitalized Harlem by renovating the buildings and strengthening law enforcement. The neighborhood is again dynamic and attractive to the middleclass,” says Ahmadou.
“We started the business with less than 10 people and these days we have about 50 staff, a majority of whom is from Senegal. We are open 20 hours. Basically, we just close to clean up. This place is so busy that we don’t have time to close. This is a Little Africa.”
“If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger,” says N’doye about his survival in the crime-ridden Harlem.
“South of Harlem has majorly changed over the years. Now we are living in a gentrification that is better than before 2000. It is now called an entrance to Manhattan. After 16 years we have built very diversified customers. We have been blessed,” says N’doye.
In 2005, N’doye was the entrepreneur of year with the Small Business Administration (SBA) in New York.
In 2009, N’doye returned to Senegal where he explores other business opportunities.
“Since I returned back to Senegal I ventured into a different business of exporting peanuts to Asia and South Africa,” says N’doye.
“I learned a lot from the restaurant business, the interactions I had with African customers helped me with other business ideas back home. There’s a lot to explore in Africa,” he says.
So, the life of this former expatriate entrepreneur took a big circle from Senegal and the Big Apple.

A Little African Dream In Gangster’s Paradise

Born in Zimbabwe to British parents, Sally J’Arlette-Joy moved to London at the age of 16, during the years of political unrest in Zimbabwe. In London, she worked as a legal secretary and DJ, and met her comedian husband. The pair soon moved to South Africa after falling in love with the country during a visit.
Thereafter, they opened an entertainment restaurant called Stars but J’Arlette-Joy sold it after her husband took off with a young waitress. She had had enough of the food industry, and decided to take a year off work.
As life happens, she was forced out of retirement in 1996, when she realized she only had R5,000 ($420) left in her bank account. Sandwiches seemed the obvious choice to her as she had stopped to grab one every day on the way to work, while living in London. She remembers occasionally treating herself to a crispy French bread stuffed with tuna, mayonnaise and fresh salad.
Using R1,000 ($84), she worked from home, typing up a small menu and distributing it. It wasn’t long until she got her first call. With word of mouth working for her, she couldn’t cope on her own and hired her first employee, two weeks into the business.
With success comes scrutiny. Someone tipped off the health inspector and she was told she could no longer sell food from home. With no other choice, J’Arlette-Joy rented a shop using the money she had left. It had nothing but a table, fridge, desk and telephone. Using her credit card she bought an old Honda motorbike for deliveries.
“Whoever reported me helped me because my business more than doubled,” says J’Arlette-Joy.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30147 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/New-shortcut.lnk_2-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/New-shortcut.lnk_2-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/New-shortcut.lnk_2-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/New-shortcut.lnk_2-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/New-shortcut.lnk_2.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
After a year in business, a woman approached J’Arlette-Joy looking to buy a franchise. She was turned away but more followed, at this point J’Arlette-Joy had three stores.
Eventually intrigued by the franchising idea, J’Arlette-Joy got reading material from the Franchise Association of South Africa but admits she put the idea on the back burner when the books didn’t make any sense to her. With growing demand and constant enquiries in the next couple of years, J’Arlette-Joy had to dig in and read so she could write her operating manual.
It was in 2002 that she sold her store in Germiston as the first franchise. Nineteen years and more than 50 stores later, her business, Sandwich Baron, is booming, and J’Arlette-Joy says she never thought she would have so many stores.
Her business strategy was simple, stressing quality and freshness. All the ingredients are cut to order. There are regular check-ups on the stores to maintain quality control. J’Arlette-Joy interviews potential franchisees personally, preferring owner-run stores, where the owners risk their own money. The franchise also goes against what is considered the norm, shying away from large malls because of the higher rent.
Thirty percent of the business comes from functions, about 10% from the stores leaving the rest to delivery orders. This is why it’s not uncommon for a large store to have 14 drivers.
J’Arlette-Joy admits she has never felt any competition in her particular market. The initial cost of a franchise is R575,000 ($48,345), excluding VAT, and returns are said to be R21,000 ($1,765) per R100,000 ($8,407). J’Arlette-Joy is up for expansion but trying a couple of new things. She has sold a master license for 45 stores in Soweto and funded the first one herself.
“We’re more of a sandwich factory than shop,” she says.
“Once the Soweto store is established, I will look into opening more in the townships.”
J’Arlette-Joy is hands-on with her business, personally owning two stores in the franchises’ top five.
The company is also launching a new tuck-shop initiative using staff members that have been around for five to six years. Each shop will take R100,000 ($8,407) to set up. The key is convincing the schools to allow it.
“I already have two successful tuck shops in private schools and have empowered a manager of mine who has worked for me for eight years into one of them,” says J’Arlette-Joy.
“She takes very good care of her franchisees; she believes in true partnership with them and she doesn’t try to be a dictator,” Jacques Taljaard, now former development manager at Sandwich Baron, once told CNBC Africa.
J’Arlette-Joy is not looking to retire anytime soon. She has two sons waiting to take over but says they must learn to run their own shops first and even then they may not be ready.
Her parting words to aspiring entrepreneurs are clear: “To be successful you have to really believe in your business.  If you think you will fail, you surely will.”

Sally-sandwich-061

Life, Served In Two Slices

If you are a foodie and live in South Africa, you know the name Tashas. Regardless of which Tashas you visit it’s always busy and people don’t  mind waiting, I certainly don’t  as long as there’s a glass of Turkish Delight or Goats do Roam Red to keep me company.
After years of surprise birthday parties, dates, family get-togethers and business meetings at Tashas, an interview with the woman that started it all was long overdue.
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Natasha Sideris is one busy woman and passionate about what she has built. Dedicated to maintaining standards, the interview was peppered with Sideris getting up to seat customers, hand them menus and tell the odd waiter to tuck in their shirt.
Given her jovial mood it was hard to believe it when Sideris described the day before as one of the worst she’s ever had. Her advice is to wake up the next day and get back to work.
Sideris’ journey into the food business began more than two decades ago. She worked part-time at her dad’s Fishmonger restaurant, while studying psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand. You could say this is where it all began.
Sideris spent years working in the fast food industry, but it wasn’t for her. She worked at Nino’s, an Italian-style restaurant franchise, helping the company open 12 new restaurants.  In 2001, the 24-year-old bought her own branch with help from the bank and her family.
In 2005, Sideris realized that all the market had to offer were themed restaurants and big chains; this is where she saw the gap.
“It was because of my experience at Nino’s that I realized there was such a gap in the South African market for this style of restaurant.”
There was a place for something niche and Sideris planned on being the first one to fill it.
The vision was clear, “authentic, old school, with good fresh food”. Sideris just needed the money to kick it off. Financing the first Tashas in Sandton in 2005 wasn’t easy. She found herself in front of a loan shark, leaving with less than she needed but more in debt than she was ready for. One can only guess what would have happened had the eatery not been a hit. Sideris didn’t draw a salary for almost two-and-a-half years.
Drawing on the success of the business, Sideris turned the Nino’s in Bedfordview, east of Johannesburg, into another Tashas. This meant another trip to a loan shark. Banks weren’t paying her much attention since all she had was an asset in debt.
“It was long, hard work but I knew I was onto something good and I persevered,” she says.
When Sideris went into business with Famous Brands, a food services company that stables some of South Africa’s best known fast food franchises, it seemed an unlikely relationship, but not to her.
“I was very, very cautious in the beginning when I did the deal with them [Famous Brands].”
What would happen to the niche, unique café style restaurants she had created if she got into bed with a mass producer, the fast food business she ran from? Looking at how it has all turned out, both parties have come out ahead.
Famous Brands may own 51% of the business but Sideris still maintains creative control. She gained valuable skills and Famous Brands in return has a unique product for its stable.
Famous Brands, as of its last annual report, has 2,378 franchised restaurants. The report also states that the group’s ‘premium offering’, Tashas, delivered 20% like-on-like growth for the period.
The franchise fee for Tashas is broken up into three segments: an initial $18,600 (R223,000) payment, 6% of the monthly turnover and an advertising fee of 2%. The company puts set-up costs at around $500,000 (R6 million), with $12,500 (R150,000)–$16,700 (R200,000) working capital required.
The trick is to have owner-operated franchises. Each possible franchisee needs to have a minimum amount of experience in the restaurant business, go through pre-screening, interviews and three months of training.
The variants in deco and menu choices give each branch a sense of individuality, allowing the customers to have a different experience in each store. The distinct décor and signature menus are determined by the area and customer base, from the Dutch look and feel in Pretoria to the Parisian-style Le Parc in Hyde Park.
The plan is to have no more than 15 stores in South Africa – there are currently 12 – in order to maintain control and not saturate the market. Sideris is looking for slow and steady growth.
“Everyone [the team] wants to do better, everyone thinks it can be better and everyone pushes.”
Right now the plans include a line of cookbooks, an online retail store with Tashas products and international expansion. Released in November, the first cookbook has made it to the top ten list at Exclusive Books. The secret is out, but Sideris says it’s not about holding onto the recipes because Tashas is more than just the food.
Sideris had some help in the form of her brother Savva. Sideris calls him her rock, a doer and true restaurateur, a dying breed in South Africa according her.
“We are not chefs, we are restaurateurs.”
Savva has been there since 2007 and set up the new operation in Dubai.
It is the success of the Tashas brand that led to Dubai. It was an intense three-year process that led to the opening of the maiden international restaurant in Jumeirah’s The Galleria Mall. The franchise was drawn to the country by its similarity to the South African landscape back in 2005 – Sideris wanted to take advantage of another gap further from home. The best South African staff
Keeping with the strategy of slow and steady growth, Saderis wants to open three or four restaurants in Dubai and explore places like Doha, Kuwait and Oman.
“We’re not going anywhere until we’ve got it absolutely right in South Africa and Dubai.”
Sideris was surprised by how well things took off in Dubai, admitting that although she was nervous she had no expectations.
Jeremy Sampson, the founder of brand consultancy firm Interbrand Sampson de Villiers, calls Tashas a fantastic success story. He says people tend to forget that a brand is about experience and that the challenge lies with making sure all the touch points are aligned.
How well will Tashas do beyond South Africa’s shores? Sampson says one of its strengths is its ability to tweak its offering and cater to the local culture; this he adds is not unlike the strategy global fast food giant McDonalds uses.
According to Sideris, “Hard work equals good luck”. You can argue she’s got plenty of both.

A Recipe For  Success

It was a small, raw, white-tiled Mexican cantina squeezed at the end of a triangular T-junction in New York’s Lower East Side; a scruffy flat-ironed cantina that would easily have been missed if Christa Ansell, a traveling chartered accountant, hadn’t walked past it.
“I love going to places that are little holes in the wall. I am not good with food chains and I don’t like to go to places that are really hyped up about. In New York it’s easy to do that because there are a lot of blogs, there are a lot of magazines. There are so many hidden places you can find walking along,” says Ansell.
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It took a snack from this cantina in 2006 to give Ansell the idea to change her life and open her own Mexican restaurant, Perron, in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“It left a little something that said ‘gee I wish we had something like that in South Africa’…It wasn’t the Mexican like I have had [in South Africa], which is nachos with ridiculous amounts of cheese on it or things that are over fried, a generally tasty but incredibly unhealthy meal. There it was with incredible flavors with beautiful fresh coriander and nice margaritas [she is a big fan of tequila as well],” she says.
Ansell’s Perron is a far cry from the street diner in the heart of New York. It is in Illovo, in the well-groomed suburbs of Sandton in Johannesburg; a hip and trendy explosion of pink and green walls, paintings of Frida Kahlo [Mexican artist], and a bar ringed by feathered lampshades with more brands of tequila than are good for you in one night.
“A lot of Joburg is really monochrome and neutral and swish and easy on the eye. I wanted to make this the ‘wake up you’re in a different place and get some life into you’. Mexico has such a rich history and we turn [their restaurants] into swinging bar doors and tumble weeds and sombreros,” she says.
“Mexican food is amazing because it has that whole street-vendor vibe. I love having a lot of tastes of things and having a lot of different flavors. It’s versatile. I have been a vegetarian for several years and it was frustrating to go to a restaurant and have only one option to eat – a mushroom risotto. Because that’s what I had and it killed me. When people get it right it’s amazing but if not it’s just stodgy rice. I wanted to do something that had more than just wild mushroom risotto on the menu.”
Ansell wears a bright red dress, a world away from the grey suits of the boardrooms of New York and London. It’s a dress that hints at her character. Apart from spending time eating out, the rebel at heart has danced at the bottom of the Guggenheim gallery in New York beneath paintings and hummed to classical music at the Museum of Modern Art across town.
Ansell has also backpacked across South America and Spain.
This restaurant was a baptism of fire that could make jalapenos cool. Ansell, who pulled into Africa after driving eight months down from London to Johannesburg with her husband, bought the lease in February 2014. The opening night, in May, was chaotic.
“Five minutes before everyone was coming, we were still drilling holes into the wall and putting up cacti and trying to get the staff all fully-trained. We painted everything ourselves. It was a hands-on thing. It was chaos,” she says.
“Being chartered accountants, we are controlled and orientated. I used to be very client-based in my former jobs meeting CEOs. I am used to long hours. I thought I was going to be fine and there can’t be challenges to working a restaurant. But you are dealing with a broader spectrum of people. Here you are dealing with waiters and waitresses who are younger, who have a different generational way of talking, and who you have to treat differently. You’ve got different cultural expectations. It’s a crazy melting pot of so many different walks of life and ways of looking at life.”
There was also the last-minute name change. They wanted to name it CabrÓn which means friends, but had to change it when they found out a diner in Cape Town had their original name.
“We thought lets register the website and then we found there was another site which had the same domain. So we went to the drawing board. Perron means cool in Mexican slang, or the man. This dude is one of the lucha libre fighters. I just loved him. And because a lot of the décor images are quite feminine I kind of thought it would be nice to have that yin and yang. That’s why we use the Perron man.”
Ansell’s restaurant uses 180 bottles of tequila a month, and 500 Jalapeno chillies a day.
What’s the hardest part of her day? “I think the nature of reviews is quite difficult. I am the kind of person that wants everyone to like me so when I read that someone doesn’t like the food I get quite upset. But it’s a challenge you have to overcome. Not everyone is going to like the kind of food that you are making. I have had a few Mexicans come in and say ‘oh but you are supposed to be authentic’ but we’re not trying to be authentic. We’re just bringing the Mexican stuff we like into Johannesburg.
“As children, my brother had this Mexican alter ego Veektor. We would pretend to have Spanish conversations. It came about that I was called ‘senorita’ by my colleagues. I had a car that had a number plate that was MXE so it was called the Mexican. I suppose you could say it has always been there in the background,” says Ansell.
A year and scores of food reviews later, Perron is flinging out burritos and chilli poppers.
“We opened on a Wednesday and from that Friday we have been basically fully booked. It’s been crazy. It started with two days in advance. Now, on weekends, you have to book a month in advance.”
A far cry from stodgy mushroom risotto.

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The Chartered Accountant Who Dove Into The Mexican Fire

A few days before her debut as a flash restaurateur, Noji Matutu Gaylard was worried about the turnout.
“I hope people come,” she said as we maneouvered through the potholed streets of old Johannesburg seeking supplies.
She needn’t have worried. She received close to a hundred visitors on the day, and rustled up a neat profit.
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Before the event, each ingredient had already been accounted for thrice over by Gaylard, formerly a media researcher by profession. She was meticulous, only free-range eggs and Norwegian smoked salmon would do. The success of her menu depended on the most delicate detail.
These were the beginnings of Gaylard’s Restaurant Day. Founded as Ravintolapäivä in 2011, the concept, now a global movement, was the brainchild of a group of Finnish entrepreneurs looking to give anyone with a knack for cuisine the chance to run their own restaurant, bar, cafe or food stall on a single day. Over the last three years, Restaurant Day has become a culinary movement celebrating food culture from living room restaurants to front-yard cafes. On the Sunday in August that Gaylard opened for business, over 2,000 pop-ups across the world were doing the same.
But her’s was the only one happening in Africa.
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Perfection on a plate
It was a brunch special. The menu was diverse with additions from other burgeoning chefs in the neighborhood. The waffles were diligently pressed and plated by Belgian pastry chef Kris Van Damme, who went to night school for six years while holding down a day job as a social worker to ply his trade. This was the first time he and Gaylard met, in her kitchen, and he went straight to work churning out waffles and innovative pastries.  His offerings were some of the most popular items on the menu.
Manning the coffee station was Eevastiina Hyvönen who was, appropriately, Finnish. She had labored the night before over the dough for the cinnamon rolls. The salmon bagels were churned out by Gaylard’s husband Joseph. And her eldest daughter had recruited friends to help with waitressing. The kitchen seemed deceptively chaotic but discipline was maintained throughout service. Gaylard’s marketing campaign had amply helped. In attendance was a heady mix of friends and strangers. The backpackers had come because of the menus she left at their usual haunts, the friends had come to support and the children had come to play with her little girl. It was, for many, the perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Reflecting on her day as a restaurant owner, Gaylard says: “It was great fun.” Her punters were satisfied with the menu and the little touches: a DJ to set the mood, a playground to distract the kids and a special buffet for the famished. It must have done the trick because her cash registers kept ringing. Gaylard is planning a second Restaurant Day in November. If that succeeds, she is considering opening a food truck.
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Ain’t No Flash In The Pan

Those who have been to Cape Town’s colorful Bo-Kaap quarter will instantly recognize the same vibrant vibe at District Six Eatery, which celebrates Cape Malay cuisine in the heart of Johannesburg’s Emmarentia suburb.
There are hurricane lanterns on the floor and panama hats on the walls. A faux chandelier sheds light on an ornate mirror and shelves laden with old biscuit tins, chinaware and pickle jars. On another wall hang family portraits and jazzy carnival costumes. Everywhere you look – walls, tables, chairs, linen – are theatrical fuschia pink, blue and orange colors.
From the small kitchen in the back, owner Grace Fourie emerges, like a stage-performer from the green room. She is wearing suspenders, jarman shoes and gold rings. When this diminutive 38-year-old smiles, you also see a glistening gold tooth.
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“That’s my Midas touch,” she winks.
Her ten-table restaurant, District Six, named after the historicial Cape Town precinct, is packed on weekends. Don’t expect to get a seat without a reservation. Tables spill on to the streets and revellers stay on until 2AM. Fourie is always present, as owner, chef, waitress – and to offer the customary parting hug.
“We offer home-style food and most people who come are regulars, but even first-timers don’t leave without a hug. The world is full of crime and animosity, so that’s the least we can do as people. I mingle with the guests, and give about 50 hugs a night,” says Fourie.
The personal touch is not the only reason she has a cult following among foodies. Fourie offers authentic Cape Malay flavors on the menu: samosas, oxtail in pumpkin, lamb curry, bobotie, smoorsnoek and tomato lamb bredie. Like the décor, the house salad is a riot of color and tastes. She sells lime pickles and pineapple chutney too, at R35 ($3) a bottle, and makes her own masalas. On weekends, she includes live comic acts, and house music by David Kramer and Bobby Hendricks.
Regulars also ask for the milk tart, another specialty. But by the time you get to dessert, Fourie would have already won you over with her honeyed talk, lacing it with enough “my sweetheart”, “my angel” and “my darling” endearments.
The Johannesburg-born Fourie says she learnt the art of customer service during her years working as a teller with Nedbank. After that stint, she worked as a hairdresser in a salon in Sophiatown – that’s when she first visited District Six Eatery, as a guest. It was then owned by Capetonians Romano Gorlei and Clarence Swartland. She offered to waitress at the restaurant, and in 18 months, the owners asked if she would be interested in buying the business.
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“I used to eat here, and offered to help. I would work until 4PM at the salon and start at the restaurant from 5.30PM. They trusted me, and when they asked me to buy the place, I did,” she says. Fourie took over in 2012, bought new furniture and crockery, and revamped the menu. She also got help from her attorney-boyfriend, Emmanuel Giddion, who spent his childhood in Cape Town’s District Six.
“A lot of Capetonians who come here get teary-eyed when they see the memorabilia and taste the food,” says Giddion.
That’s when Fourie knows she has done something right.

50 Hugs a night

It all started with a beer television advertisement. It shows a dreamer, called Vuyo, who starts selling boerewors (traditional sausages) rolls on the streets and becomes a global brand; ending with a party on his yacht.
Kubheka was impressed and did a bit of research, only to find out that the Vuyo’s brand and the character was fiction. He swiftly trademarked the name Vuyo’s and opened a restaurant based on the advert. The unintended consequence was that the ad was building the Vuyo’s brand.
“I saw the ad like everyone else. And I thought that’s actually a good ad. But for me it was such a positive story. It’s like true entrepreneurship starting from grass roots,” says Kubheka.
At the time, he was running a small IT and software firm called Notsi Group for five years, with a partner, following a seven year stint at Microsoft. This IT geek left his desktop to focus on the restaurant, with little knowledge about the food business.
“It’s one of those things where I literally saw an opportunity and I thought to myself, one can work their entire career and not build up that amount of branding needed that South African Breweries was putting into this thing [the television beer advertisement]. It was sitting there and nobody was doing anything about it. I think that was a compelling enough reason to go into an industry I didn’t know,” says Kubheka.
The entrepreneur started by selling at outdoor events, but this was too small for him. Like Vuyo, he dreamed bigger. Kubheka decided to move away from mobile units.
He went back to the advert with the premise of dreaming big. So naturally, the next step was to open a restaurant. He was turned away seven times by a landlord who eventually gave Kubheka the contract for a property located opposite the University of the Witwatersrand, one of the biggest universities in South Africa, a spot which would bring in the numbers. It was the same university in Johannesburg where he completed his IT and Master’s degree.
“Surprisingly most of my customers are the working class. They want to leave the office and go somewhere clean and uncrowded. In Braamfontein there are not many areas where you can have a fast casual dining experience,” says Kubheka.
He opened his restaurant in December 2012 to much fanfare and even ordered a flurry of artificial snow. This was a strange detail, but he claims it was to attract attention to the red and white restaurant. This was one of the dreams he had inked on a cupboard in his bedroom while growing up.
In high school, Kubheka wrote down a projected timeline for his goals on his wardrobe door: the year he would finish his final year of high school, own a car and make his first million. He has now achieved all of that.
Today, when you walk into the restroom at Vuyo’s, you are flanked by two walls full of graffiti, which might give you the impression that the place is not well looked after, but look more closely. In between all those scribbles and graphics are 10 of Kubheka’s goals for the restaurant: By 2018, he hopes to be FORBES AFRICA’s person of the year. By 2022, he wants to make Vuyo’s the number one global brand, and also to have opened around 1,000 stores all over the world a year before that.
He wants to make South African food world renowned and build something that lasts.
“One of my frustrations about the country is that there is no good South African restaurant that is franchised or gone global that sells good boerewors, dumplings or samp. There are none. More importantly, I just want South African food to be thought of no different from when you go to an Italian, French or Chinese restaurant and the like,” he says.
The 37 year old has achieved one of his first goals written on the wall. Vuyo’s signed a deal to have 300 branded mobile units outside Spar outlets, a grocery retailer, across the country. He says if each vendor sells 50 boerewors rolls at $1.9 each a day, they would make a net income of $1,160 a month.
“My big dream is to make other big dreamers, like guys who have a braai next to the stadium, so we can give them branded Vuyo’s carts for no upfront capital outlay. To me that’s what it’s about, to give other people a leg up. I had one or two leg ups on my journey,” says Kubheka.
In early November, Kubheka says they had started rolling out the mobile units at Spars in Johannesburg, while work is underway to open a second store in Bloemfontein, in South Africa’s Free State province.
At the main restaurant, they serve various traditional South African dishes ranging from pap, stews, morogo (African spinach), dumplings, samp and koeksisters.
“Our vision is simple. We want to make South African cuisines world class. And that’s how we’re going to change the world,” he says.
As lunchtime approaches and the restaurant starts filling up, Kubheka’s senses intensify. He looks around to see if customers are happy and whether they have received their food.
Kubheka is doing his best to make the Vuyo’s brand a success. Between his busy schedule of managing the restaurant, he even has time to have lunch with Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex and third son of Queen Elizabeth the second. He also presented his business model to Britain’s headline-grabbing billionaire Richard Branson.
“He was impressed with my business model and he is keen to invest in us [Vuyo’s]. We are busy with the due diligence,” says Kubheka.
This young entrepreneur is certainly not just a big dreamer and he is not resting on his laurels. He is too busy making strides in building Vuyo’s as the number one global brand.

Business On A Roll

Ken Ayere’s moment of lucidity came to him as he was about to write his last story. His head was full of wonderful memories of life reporting on the road, his pocket was empty.
Ayere was at the end of a 14-year-long career working for the News Agency of Nigeria and was the bureau chief in South Africa. He was about to end his contract, when the thought hit him.
“Remuneration from media was just not enough for me. My mind was working on a way forward. I was thinking about how I could change the status quo,” he says.
<div id="attachment_711" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-711" class="size-large wp-image-711" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/352-151-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Kenn Ayere, Sandton, South Africa; 3 May 2012 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff.</div>
The answer was drawn from his experiences of welcoming visitors to South Africa from Nigeria. They all wanted Nigerian food, but there weren’t that many salubrious places in Johannesburg to go to.
Ayere, who also craved Nigerian food, decided to open his own restaurant. The idea was to create a restaurant which served West, East and Central African food where ex-patriates could meet and feel at home. The gimmick was that a Kenyan waiter would serve a Kenyan in his or her mother tongue; a Nigerian would serve a Nigerian, and so on. Ayere already had a name in his head, Homebaze, a place where Africans from across the continent could feel at home.
The trick was to raise money—not always easy when you are in a country far from home. Ayere managed to eke a little money out of the banks; the rest came from his life savings and borrowings from his family.
“I got the capital I needed to bring this dream to fruition,” he says.
In 2003, Homebaze opened its doors in Randburg, Johannesburg, with Mrs Ayere running the kitchen. The dining public of South Africa could sit down to plantain, egusi soup, chapati, pounded yam and moinmoin—a kind of Nigerian bean cake, amongst other delicacies on the Homebaze menu.
Supplies are not easy. You can’t nip down to the supermarket; every recipe and ingredient has to be imported from across Africa—you can’t afford to leave one spice out of a Nigerian dish if you want to satisfy a Nigerian palate. This alone costs at least R100,000 ($ 12.140) a month and Ayere tries to cut down on his costs by getting friends to stash spices in their suitcases.
“While it was a salable concept, it still took a while for things to get off the ground. I had to do a lot of marketing,” says Ayere.
The idea grew and there are now a total of three Homebaze restaurants in Johannesburg and Pretoria, with a fourth being built.
“I am very happy with my brand and I have exciting plans for the future,” he says.
Ayere toyed with the idea of opening a branch back home in Nigeria, but the cost of business and generators outweighed the romance of a triumphant return.
Nine years into his life as a restaurant owner, Ayere had a second epiphany. The power of the pen had never left him and now nagged him to write again. One day, he was sitting in restaurant when he decided to take up, once again, that which is mightier than the sword.
“Once in media, always in media; the bug bit again,” he says.
The result was a newspaper for Nigerians in South Africa, called The Envoy, which aims to tell their story.
“This is to spread information about the good professional Nigerians here and dispel the myth of the negative impact of Nigerians in business,” he says.
In both his business ventures, Ken Ayere has a full plate.

Tag: restaurant.

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