‘They Keep On Expecting To Get Things  For Free’’

Rirhandzu Letty Ngobeni was born poor, but even as a young child, she was determined to not let that define her life.
Ngobeni, born in Nkuri, a village in South Africa’s Limpopo province, had to sleep on maize meal bags most of her childhood. Today, the entrepreneur is responsible for catering companies and the nationwide maintenance of South African behemoths like MTN.
When we meet the 43-year-old at her offices near Krugersdorp, west of Johannesburg, there are no signs of the pain or penury she experienced. Until she opens up about her past, and you see how much she was affected by it.
“I grew up in extreme poverty, extreme to such an extent that sometimes we wouldn’t even have food to eat. At school I had no uniform and I couldn’t afford school fees which were R15 [around $1],” says Ngobeni.
She was the fourth of seven siblings raised by a hard-working, determined mother. Her father worked at the then state-owned rail company, Spoornet, and lived in Johannesburg. He hardly supported the family.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30807 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Letty-102-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Letty-102-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Letty-102-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Letty-102-600x903.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Letty-102-681x1024.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Letty-102.jpg 680w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
“As much as I love him, the truth is he never supported us. My father would only send an 80 kilogram bag of maize meal after some time,” she says with some bitterness.
Ngobeni started school at the age of four, matriculating when she was only 15. She was allowed to enter school at the time despite her young age because she was tall and able to pass the rudimental criteria of being able to reach over her head with her left hand and touch her right ear.
Life was tough. Having no shoes meant she had to walk barefoot on the scorching roads of Limpopo, to and from school.
“The tar road was always very hot and on the side of the road there were thorns all over. That left me with two options, I had to run or get burnt,” says Ngobeni.
She gets overtly emotional when dwelling on another childhood memory.
“A neighbor had brought over pap for our family to eat for supper. My mother told us to eat but I refused. When she asked why, I told her ‘we’ll eat today but what about tomorrow’?” The young Ngobeni went to bed on an empty stomach.
“Now that I have children of my own, I can imagine the pain I must have caused my mother that night,” says Ngobeni.
Luckily for her, her entrepreneurial streak was evident from her high school  days when she worked as a domestic worker for R10 ($0.70) a week. She used that money to buy chicken feet, which she then sold at school.
But Ngobeni almost didn’t finish school because she couldn’t afford the R75 ($5.50) exam fee. On the day of her first exam, she informed her teachers she was dropping out.
“When I got to school, I cried hard. One of my teachers asked what was wrong and I told him I was dropping out because I didn’t have money for the exam fee. He paid my fee and I passed with a matric exemption,” says Ngobeni.
At the age of 16, after convincing the local primary school principal she needed a job, she became an unqualified teacher, earning R450 ($33) per month. The following year she enrolled at Tivumbeni College where she studied to become a teacher, majoring in accounting and business economics.
By the age of 20, Ngobeni was teaching at a high school in Limpopo. The following year, she married and relocated to Pretoria where her husband was employed.
She taught at a private school in Pretoria, where she soon progressed as deputy principal, but she wanted to move to a government school.
“I wanted to have the government benefits teachers have, which is why I went back to a government school,” chuckles Ngobeni.
After three years, Ngobeni quit teaching to try her hand at entrepreneurship.
“I was talking to my husband and he told me that we can’t both be public servants. He encouraged me to open up a business, so we bought a Barcelos Restaurant in Alberton Mall,” she says.
This venture unfortunately wasn’t successful. Ngobeni tried various ways to keep it going, including burning onions so passers-by would be lured by the scent.
That didn’t help. In 2010, she had no option but to relinquish the business.
During this difficult time, her husband kept her going.
“My husband is my pillar of strength. He’s my worst critic and my strongest supporter. They say that behind every successful man there’s a woman, with us it’s the other way around.”
Ngobeni kept an eye on tenders and attended a grass-cutting briefing, where she approached a woman who had experience in the business.
“I asked her to teach me about the business because I knew nothing about grass-cutting and she was very helpful. She had government contracts and offered me a sub-contractor job.”
That was the birth of her maintenance company, Integrico. The company’s first major contract was the Ekurhuleni Metro Municipality.
She has come a long way since. Ngobeni says Integrico’s clients now include City Power, the South African Broadcasting Corporation and MTN.
With a noteworthy passion for cooking, Ngobeni did a course at the HTA School of Culinary Art, a chef school in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, in 2011. She then applied for a tender to run a canteen at MTN.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30808 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Letty-074-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Letty-074-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Letty-074-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Letty-074-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Letty-074.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“My teaching skills came in handy at the presentation and they said they’d get back to me. A few days later, I got a letter saying they wanted to do a site inspection of my place, which was a problem because there was no site to inspect!”
“I spoke to a friend I studied with at HTA who had a professional kitchen and asked her if I could do the inspection at her place. We did it there and I got the contract,” says Ngobeni.
Today, her company, Mndhavazi Caterers, supplies food for the Road Accident Fund, Munaca Holdings and MTN among others.
Ngobeni’s businesses have broadened into butcheries, which supply her catering company and 20 other restaurants. She decided it would be more cost-effective to own her own butchery after bagging a tender for meat.
“I approached a butchery owner not far from my office, gave him an offer, the rest is history, the butchery is mine now,” says Ngobeni, grinning.
“I’m currently renovating the third butchery… ultimately I want to franchise them.”
The one regret Ngobeni has however is that her parents didn’t live long enough to see her success. She says they would be treated like royalty had they been alive.
“I don’t know how many helpers my mother would have. Groceries would fill the house and she would be spoilt, even my father. Yes I was bitter towards him for a long time until my brother spoke to me and taught me the power of forgiveness.”
And Ngobeni’s message for aspiring entrepreneurs who dont have it all?
“Go after what you want, poverty can never stand in your way!”

Letty-087

Hunger And Sore Feet On The Thorny Road To Success

It was a sunny southern hemisphere spring day in October 1931 when businessman Max Sonnenberg and his son, Richard, opened the doors of a small shop in Cape Town&#8217;s city center. Allegedly housed in the dining room of the old Royal Hotel on Plein Street, within spitting distance from parliament&#8217;s back entrance, the store promised to bring value and affordability to South Africa&#8217;s white middle class.
Timing was far from ideal. The Wall Street Crash two years before had submerged the world in a frothing whirlpool of economic turmoil. South Africa too, was affected. Despite hardship dominated by poor economic growth, tumbling exports, and mass retrenchments, the store was a success. It did so well that it captured the entrepreneurial imagination of serial businessman Elie Susman who had made his fortune from cattle, banking, and retail.
<div id="attachment_4090" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4090" class="size-medium wp-image-4090" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_0382-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />????????????????????????????????????</div>
Having a genuine eye for business opportunities, Susman was taken aback by the success he saw, prompting him to financially back the opening of a second store in Durban. More branches followed suit and soon Woolworths was deeply embedded in South Africans’ day-to-day shopping lexicon.
Since the 1930s, Woolworths has morphed into a multi-billion-dollar holding company, comprising the familiar Woolworths food and clothing brand, as well as Australian brands Country Road and David Jones. The latter, a denim retailer, was bought last year for $2 billion. The acquisition proved to be a massive boost for Woolworths Holdings Limited (WHL), which saw its profit over the first six months to December 28, 2014, jump by 29%. Sales increased by 55%, to $2.56 billion. Without the David Jones business, sales would have grown by only 12.5%.
The David Jones acquisition also led to an expansion of WHL’s footprint, to 1,200 stores in 15 countries worldwide, including Australia. The 633 Woolies branches in 12 African nations, including Botswana, Namibia, and Kenya, however remain the company’s backbone. This number is likely to increase.
“We want to grow our footprint by some 10% per annum for the next three or four years,” says Group CEO, Ian Moir, adding that a lot of attention will go to the food side of the business. “Our food footprint has more than doubled since 2010.”
While WHL has been doing well, things have not always looked bright. The retailer was badly affected by the economic crisis of 2008/2009, which sank South Africa into its first recession in 17 years. Moir says the attitude of the company, which only comprised food and clothing at the time, towards its customers, was one of the culprits.
“We had become complacent, arrogant, and too expensive, and we were not listening to our customers. As a result, our sales plummeted during the recession,” he says.
<div id="attachment_4089" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4089" class="size-medium wp-image-4089" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_0355-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />????????????????????????????????????</div>
The downturn forced Woolworths to rethink its strategy.
“Someone once said that one should never let the benefits of a good recession pass by,” says Moir. “The Woolworths of today sees the customer as king, not the product. That is the big difference. If the customer thinks we are wrong, then we are wrong. If the customer thinks our prices are too high, then the prices are too high. That has been the biggest transformation since the recession.”
Complaints are taken seriously, says Moir.
“We used to be known as arrogant and not wanting to listen. Today, we reply to all complaints, queries, and criticism through our customer communications and social media teams. I even get some of them.”
The Woolworths approach has been well received in South Africa, as well as in other African countries such as Botswana and Namibia. Here the brand is still growing substantially. In some countries however, Woolworths didn’t manage to get off the ground. Nigeria is one of them. Last year the company decided to pull out of Africa’s largest economy for the second time.
“We were losing money hand over fist. Nigeria is a very difficult market for any apparel retailer to make money in. Firstly, the Nigerian retail market is largely informal, with very few shopping malls. The rental of the shopping malls that do exist, is very high,” says Moir.
“Doing business is very difficult, generally speaking, from traveling around to getting goods in the country,” he says, adding that Woolworths uses the same suppliers regardless of the location.
“We made a mistake by going into Nigeria, despite having the right partner,” Moir confesses. “It was the second time we tried it, and we won’t be trying it for a third time. Nigeria just doesn&#8217;t work for us.”
Moir doesn’t see Woolworths’ Nigeria adventure as wasted time. Making mistakes, he says, makes you grow.
“You, as a business, can always get better, and you will always make mistakes and there are always things to learn. My biggest fear is complacency in a business. If you think you won’t make mistakes, then you will fail.”
In other countries, business is going well. Moir says this is a result of the way Woolworths treats its employees.
“Our salaries are competitive and our benefits are better than elsewhere.”
Based on feedback from employees, the jobs portal, Indeed.co.za, gives Woolworths four out of five stars as an employer with staff discounts and incentives lauded. It, however, says salaries are too low and work hours too long.
The brand’s strength, according to Moir, is associated with value, principles, integrity, and sustainability.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4091" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/woolworths-120-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
The company donates $79,000 to educational causes every week. Moir also says the company is committed to environmental sustainability, such as minimizing water consumption and reducing the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Despite its good intentions, Woolworths has faced the wrath of environmental activists more than once, and for a multitude of issues, including the treatment of pigs, the use of GMOs and claims the company’s free-range milk was not free-range at all.
“That type of activism is good for us as it forces us to do the right thing,” says Moir.
“That is why we, apart from selling free-range eggs, want to ensure that free-range eggs are used in all Woolworths branded products, down to the cake mix. This was a tough process. You are, after all, dealing with large suppliers of which you are not the only customer. As a result, you can’t do things as fast as activists would want you to. It takes years sometimes.”
Environmental activist, Caroline Hurry, however, claims the company won’t speak to her.
“They refused to answer any of my questions in writing. In the beginning, when I started investigating their practices in relation to animal cruelty, they suggested I call them for ‘a little chat’. But being a journalist, I insist on answers in writing. I have also found that the soy in their bread had the second-highest GMO content in the country&#8230; Woolworths doesn’t label all their GM food. At best, the label says ‘may contain GMO’. I have now been blocked on Twitter, by the very account that told us to ask questions,” says Hurry.
While he has sympathy for environmental activists, Moir is no fan of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which calls for the active isolation of Israel and for the country to end its occupation of Palestine. In South Africa, BDS has its teeth firmly sunk into Woolworths. Their objective is to force the retailer to stop selling Israeli products – 0.4% of its total offer.
“These protests were very unpleasant for our staff and customers, with pig heads being left on our shelves and people charging through stores, knocking over our goods, destroying them even. We have had protestors lying on the floor, pouring blood over themselves. A court order has stopped this.”
Despite the court order, the protesters claim their actions were costly for the retailer.
“The campaign is successful and growing. An independent report, released by Wits University, states that WHL has lost close to $3 million, since the start of the #BoycottWoolworths campaign in August last year. A survey among 300 people has shown that 84% of respondents said they stopped shopping at Woolworths shortly after we called for boycott,” says BDS coordinator, Muhammed Desai.
Despite a few setbacks, Woolworths has grown from a small store in Cape Town to an international retailer – a story of shopping bags
to riches.

How David Became A Goliath

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 so 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.
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.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30130 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/086-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/086-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/086-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/086-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/086-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/086-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/086.jpg 682w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
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 on to 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.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30127 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-bread-13-214x300.jpg" alt="" width="214" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-bread-13-214x300.jpg 214w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-bread-13-300x420.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-bread-13-600x840.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-bread-13-768x1075.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-bread-13-732x1024.jpg 732w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-bread-13.jpg 731w" sizes="(max-width: 214px) 100vw, 214px" />
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.
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 10 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 members have been taken to the Jumeirah store for a year, with the option of staying longer.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30128 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-cakes-2-214x300.jpg" alt="" width="214" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-cakes-2-214x300.jpg 214w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-cakes-2-300x420.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-cakes-2-600x840.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-cakes-2-768x1075.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-cakes-2-732x1024.jpg 732w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Hyde-cakes-2.jpg 731w" sizes="(max-width: 214px) 100vw, 214px" />
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.

IMG_1583

A Recipe For Success

It’s not every day that a kitchen experiment turns into a community-empowering initiative. Leeko Makoene numbed her tongue and survived two ulcers to discover an authentic fiery taste named Chilladido.
With the brand’s co-owner Portia Mmabatho Morudi, she is bent on giving back to the communities they grew up in, with a ‘Made With Rural’ concept showcasing their authentic offerings.
While most of their peers have migrated to urban areas, the duo returned to invest in rural South Africa.
“It doesn’t make sense that rural communities who have rich arable land [at their disposal] still experience abject poverty and huge rates of unemployment,” says Makoene.
Chilladiddo is a food manufacturing company that produces chilli sauces, relishes, honey and other food products. The ingredients are sourced from Makapanstad village, processed in Lanseria, Johannesburg, and then sold at food shows, markets and a few Spars outlets in the city.
To make their business viable, the duo sought a partnership with the PEACE Foundation to set up structures to make  the projects sustainable. The foundation provided the necessary skills, resources and know-how in the communities.
The duo’s iLawu Honey project driven by the rural village of Winterveld is a showcase of innovation; the bee-hives are located in citrus farms managed by co-operatives in the area. The hives help with the pollination, and the honey produced is sold at food shows and markets.
This was Morudi’s brainchild, and for this, she was selected an emerging change-maker in South Africa by Spark International and invited by Virgin Unite and the Richard Branson group to speak at an event in London in 2014.
“Year after year, government ploughs money into projects and co-operatives operated in rural areas, only to see them fail and out of business a year later, simply because it is hard for them to crack the retail space, and secure sustainable markets,” offers Makoene.
As an entrepreneur, she found a solution to this issue. They partnered with like-minded small business owners, who are looking to raw materials and other things to keep activity in the rural supply market chain.
Makoene maintains that the youth misunderstand rural development.
“Agriculture is food. The whole chain of taking food from the soil, all the way to the shelf and the plate is what agriculture is about. There is a broad and exciting future in agriculture. African youth can create a legacy for themselves and their communities.”
In June 2015, the pair will host a mentorship walk in rural Makapanstad, where professionals, government officials and business owners will motivate and encourage the youth to pursue their dreams.
Plans are also underway to source funding to convert an inactive school facility in one of the villages into a processing plant for manufacturing Chilladiddo products.
Already awarded grant money from SAB Kickstart and The Hope Factory to help move the business forward, the Chilladiddo duo are set to launch a franchise food outlet and host a big festival to showcase all that Makapanstad has to offer.
“I am more fulfilled and rich doing the work that I do for rural development. I get pure joy on a tractor, than in a Porsche. Life has humbled me, and shown me what it is that matters the most, and from there, I have started receiving material riches,” says Makoene.
The chilli sauces and the fire in their bellies are enough to keep them going.

2014-02-21-15.13.11

From The Soil To The Shelves

Imagine if the next time you needed to toss together a salad, spice up a meal or garnish an after-dinner treat, you only went as far as your balcony, rooftop or garden to source the ingredients. If you are a city-dweller in sub-Saharan Africa, that is more possible than you think.
Urban farming is mushrooming on the continent, almost as quickly as the rate at which people are moving into cities. Around 40% of the African population (around 375 million people) are metropolitan residents and that number will grow to 60% by 2050. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that 150 million of those people grow their own food.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3476" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/shutterstock_33409384-300x201.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="201" />
A handful of them are hipsters who nurture herb gardens while practising yoga and preaching about organic eating and low carbon footprints. Hundreds of thousands more are after more than just a feel-good factor. Just as urban farming became part of the recovery after the First World War and is being used by Cubans to combat crippling sanctions, in Africa it is solving some of society’s most severe problems. Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s most under-nourished region and is rife with hunger and unemployment.
The FAO cited Malawi, Cameroon and Ghana, where up to 50% of households have vegetable gardens, as three countries with successful urban farming programs. South Africa is not far behind, with steps being taken to encourage urban farming in a country where around 20% of the population does not know where their next meal is coming from.
“Urban agriculture projects strive to reduce food security and create economic upliftment. Growing food in the backyard of your shack can be the difference between going hungry and having a healthy meal on the table for your family,” says Catherine Nicks, the Project Manager of Tyisa Nabanye, a non-profit urban agriculture organization which runs a farm on the slopes of Signal Hill in Cape Town.
Tyisa Nabanye occupies land on ERF 81, one of the original sites of agriculture in the Cape that dates back to the 1700s. Although it is historically farmland, these days it is not an ideal place to grow crops. While the clay soil remains nutrient rich, the area is often lashed by heavy rains and strong winds which destroy a harvest overnight. But Nicks and a team of seven others have found a way of working with the elements instead of fighting them through an ideology of permaculture.
“We practice companion planting in our garden, where certain vegetables are planted together with certain herbs and play different roles. Some plants feed or fix nutrients in the soil, others repel or attract insects that perform specific functions,” says Nicks.
“We find that kale and spinach do well in our garden, partly because they need little attention and they grow year round. And partly because they sell well, people cannot get enough of the very limited kale in the city.”
Kale is the new ‘it’ food and is often used in green juice where it is blended with spinach, cucumber and apple to create a healthy brew. One-Juice, a company that specializes in selling these drinks, buys some of its kale directly from Tyisa Nabanye. By doing that, they have created a direct connection between customers that are conscious of where their food comes from and the producers who supply that food.
People who drink One-Juice’s products only have to ask where the raw materials come from to be directed to Tyisa Nabanye. There they are welcome to see for themselves how the crops are grown. Nicks meets many of them personally, answers questions, introduces them to the gardeners and invites them to
come back.
“Urban farming is largely about reducing the distance between farm and fork, about increasing ones understanding about where our food comes from. We now know the name of our farmer as well as our doctor,” says Nicks.
“It’s about knowing what a gooseberry looks like before it has been dehusked, washed and placed on a layer of bubble wrap in a plastic container, what the leaf of a watermelon plant looks like and how tall a tomato plant can grow. We use our garden to share our knowledge about where our food comes from and how we can be more sustainable.”
But it’s not as simple as that. The 8.2–hectares, of which Tyisa Nabanye does not even occupy a tenth, is owned by the South African National Defence Force and run by the Department of Public Works. The farm does not have a lease to operate and there are constant bureaucratic battles to overcome, despite a policy in place which promotes urban farming.
In June 2007, the City of Cape Town drafted an urban agriculture policy in which stated its vision to create a ‘prosperous and growing urban agriculture sector,’ which would center on poverty alleviation and job creation. By encouraging agriculture in the city, the government hoped to take steps to increase food security and provide people with a sustainable income source.
More than five years after the document was tabled, the city reached an agreement with the Oranjezicht City Farm (OZCF) to turn a disused bowling green into a bowl of greens, literally. The farm uses that phrase as its slogan now. It was the city’s first pop-culture urban farm and quickly captured the attention of Capetonians because it was promoted as a community space.
OZCF connected itself to locals through a weekly market which sold fresh vegetables grown on the farm and grew to include a variety other stalls. It became the place to be on a Saturday morning for socializing, sipping on fair-trade coffee or craft beer or even trying a hand at farming as one of the OZCF volunteers. But the quaintness did not last.
The farm is situated on a heritage site and city officials require certain safety requirements to be met to accommodate the foot traffic and a proper market licence to trade. In early December, news broke that the market would stop until those boxes were ticked and the young and beautiful were outraged. They had grown to think of OZCF as a public property and exerted enough pressure to move the market to the official residence of the province’s Premier, Helen Zille, from where it continues to operate from.
The fracas over OZCF remains unresolved but it achieved something the community wanted most; it created awareness. Residents cared enough about where their food was coming from to go to where it was being grown. They watch it flower and flourish, buy it unwashed and unpackaged, cook it themselves, eat it and share it with others. If that sentiment lasts, urban farming will continue growing in Africa and could become as commercially viable as it in Beijing, where half the vegetables consumed in the city are in grown in urban farms.
With that in mind, go on and grow
a little.

Farming Coming  To A Town Near You

Poor access to food and malnutrition remain widespread and deep-seated in Africa’s second largest economy. The South African National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey shows 25% of South Africans – 13 million people – are hungry. Another 28% of the population is at risk of being hungry. Put simply: more than half of the Rainbow Nation’s population has to worry about where their next meal comes from.
The hallways at Alpine Primary School in Mitchell’s Plain, a township 35 kilometers from Cape Town, are filled with shrieks and bursts of laughter as the boys and girls make their way to the exit. Sixty to eighty youngsters will remain behind for another two to three hours, to participate in the aftercare program organized by Run4Schools. Founded 10 years ago by Dutch athlete Leslie Pangemanan, the organization provides a safe space for children at four primary schools in Mitchell’s Plain. Gang violence is common here, and children often get caught in the crossfire.
“Criminals are constantly trying to recruit kids as drug dealers and new gang members,” says general manager Frank Steyn, a past beneficiary of Run4Schools.
Run4Schools wants to prevent this by offering better alternatives: sports and food.
“We give the kids a sandwich, some juice, and a piece of fruit,” Steyn explains. “&#8230;For many of them, this is the last thing they will eat until they return to school the next day. The other schools we work with have feeding schemes. Many children rely on those school meals. We want to give them something extra. Some will go for a second helping, to give to a sibling at home. Hunger is a fact of life in Mitchell’s Plain, because of poverty.”
The most recent Child Gauge, released in 2014 by the University of Cape Town’s Children’s Institute, estimates that 2.5 million South African children (aged 0 – 17) live in households where hunger is part of day to day life. Child hunger is most problematic in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, where respectively 20% and 16% of children are living in households where there is not enough food.
Chronic hunger can have severe and potentially fatal implications. One of them is stunting, where a child is too short for their age.
“Over 25 percent of South African children under the age of three are stunted. This is a direct result of undernourishment in terms of energy and micronutrient intake,” says David Sanders, founding director of the School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape.
Stunting is not just a matter of height. According to the United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF), it is associated with an under-developed brain, which can have long-lasting harmful consequences. These include a diminished mental ability and learning capacity, poor school performance in childhood, and increased risks of nutrition related chronic diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.
Vitamin A and iron deficiencies are some of the most common nutritional shortcomings in South Africa.
“Data suggests that 44% of children under five years old are vitamin A deficient. This compromises their immune systems, and makes them extra susceptible to potentially fatal infections,” says Sanders.
The most alarming statistic, says Sanders, is that 64% of deaths of children under the age of five in South Africa can be attributed to malnutrition.
The situation is not a result of inadequate food production.
“South Africa can feed itself with what it produces… The main problems here are inadequate distribution, affordability, and access to good food. A large section of South Africa’s poor has to survive on cheap, unhealthy diets which largely consist of refined starches, refined carbohydrates, a lot of sugar, very little good protein, very little dairy, and very few micronutrients. Some of the poor can’t even afford that,” says Sanders.
The promotion of unhealthy foods, such as fast food and sugary beverages, is not helping. Sanders is concerned about the aggressive marketing of soft drinks.
“Township businesses are often offered a Coca-Cola sign with their shop’s name on it. When you visit any given township in South Africa, you will see those red and white signs everywhere,” he says. “The data we have shows us that South Africans consume three times the global average intake of Coca-Cola. It is often cheaper than milk.”
A stone’s throw from Cape Town International Airport and stuck in between highways, runways, a cemetery, and Coca-Cola signs in surrounding townships, lies Freedom Farm. Like most informal settlements in South Africa, this place – home to 600 families – is anything but what the name suggests.
Clean water, adequate sanitation, and social services such as healthcare and waste management are nothing but a pipe dream. In the meantime, hunger and malnutrition are ripping though this community like a knife through table cloth.
Every first Sunday of the month, a temporary faint light appears at the end of the tunnel. That is when Stephanie Benjamin and her soup kitchen team, known as Ladles of Love, pull in.
“We feed between 300 and 500 people that day. Children eat first,” she says. “I would like to do more but I am largely financing this out of my own pocket. Luckily, a local supermarket is helping me out. They give me food that is edible, but can’t be sold. Bread that has been pressed too hard, for instance, which would have been thrown away.”
Throwing away edible food seems surreal in a country where half the population doesn’t have the security of regular meals. It is however a harsh reality.
“We rescue 400,000 tons of food per year worth R100 million ($7.1 million) from partner retailers and wholesalers,” says Andy Du Plessis, Managing Director of Foodbank SA.
“This food, after it’s been checked and made sure it is fit for human consumption, is distributed among 450 community organizations across South Africa. They in turn pass it on to 110,000 beneficiaries. The food we rescue, translates into 12.7 million meals per year.”
These staggering figures are the tip of South Africa’s food waste iceberg.
“It is estimated that we landfill R60 billion ($4.2 billion) worth of food every year,” says Du Plessis.
Based on this figure and the Foodbank SA’s stats, one can conclude that South Africa throws away 7.62 billion meals per year, or 20.82 million meals per day. This is enough to provide each of the 13 million hungry South Africans a meal and a half per day for an entire year.
“These are alarming statistics, but what makes it even more alarming is that this situation can be avoided, as a large portion of this food is dumped before it even reaches the stores,” Du Plessis says, pointing fingers at supply chain issues such as overproduction, incorrect labelling, and damaged packaging.
Another way to alleviate South Africa’s levels of food insecurity is to change the country’s food security and agriculture policies; for instance, enabling South Africans to grow their own food and assisting small farmers, says Sanders.
According to the UN, only 2% of South African households are involved in agriculture for their personal use. In Malawi and Zambia, this is respectively 90% and 60%.
“Generally speaking, South Africans purchase most of the food they consume. In many other African countries, however, people tend to survive on what they produce on the land,” Sanders says. “I would say that many of those counties, at least those I know, have more programmes in place to support small farmers. In South Africa, there is very little of that. Here, small farmers are completely neglected. An added problem is that government has done inadequately in terms of land reform.”
As the food wastes away, so do the frames of the country’s hungry.

Hunger Yet $4.2 Billion In The Bin

Farming is anyone’s game, even if you can’t see.
Forty-five-year-old Nobuhle Mthembu had a severe migraine, aged 10, that cost her her sight.
“I woke up one morning and I just couldn’t see. My eyes were closed. My grandmother washed them with water and my eyelids opened but I have never been able to see since then,” she says.
The business of food has become her solace and living.
In an orange overall, on this cloudy winter’s day in the coastal KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa, she navigates around the plot with her walking stick. Mthembu can do everything those with sight can, if not more.
“I use my sense of touch to do my work and run this business. Planting is easy and I can do it the same way a person with eyes can, the difficult part is weeding after planting has been done. Because I can’t see, I can’t use tools because I might take out the good too. So I have to use my hands. I touch around the plants and I can feel the difference between weeds and crops and I pull out the weeds.”
Water is pumped into tanks and buckets from a stream, running along the bottom of the plot, to irrigate the crops. Shipping containers are used to store produce.
“Even if we are disabled, there are things we are capable of doing.”
Mthembu has memory as her guide. She spent her childhood watching her grandmother farm.
“I enjoyed being in the fields with my grandmother. I used to cry to help at all times until they allowed me to. I told myself, blind or not, I will farm,” she says.
Because of her zeal, her grandmother gave her a field, the size of half a football pitch, to plant.
“In October, on my birthday month, my grandmother said I should plant peanuts on my section. I was very happy. The peanuts I planted grew and were amazingly big and I noticed that this is my gift, and I could make money from it. ”
“Farming is my thing. I grew up in a family that made its money and food through farming. My grandmother liked farming and I was always with her. Even after she died, I continued with the work,” she says.
Following her dream to make money, in 1989 she started a vegetable garden with her sister, Bukani Latha, who is paralyzed on one side.
“We realized that, as a disabled person, depending on the government doesn’t help because the disabled social grants are not enough and we need to contribute to the economy,” says Mthembu.
She gathered disabled people for a meeting to encourage them into the field. It was a long journey of 10 years.
In 2009, she gained permission from the local council to farm a plot of land at Inchanga, near Cato Ridge in KwaZulu-Natal. She finally founded the 19-member Bukani Sibonelo Disabled Women’s Co-operative. The council helped with seeds.
“This team gives me hope.  Every day, we make a difference in our lives and in those of our families, and most importantly we add value in the country by promoting food security through the items we sell,” says Mthembu.
The team grows spinach, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, beetroot and mushrooms. These are sold nearby, given to the needy and supplied to clinics.
Mthembu has won four awards and says they encourage her to work harder.
“I want my work to inspire other disabled people to get involved in agriculture and do the best they can instead of begging on the street.”
Profits and prizemoney are ploughed back.
“We now want to expand our work by supplying major retailers which could bring in good money for us. People may laugh or look down on disabled people but when you offer something valuable, the way they look at you is different,” she says.
Mthembu wants to read braille, there is no doubt she will. She has already proved where there is a will, there is fertile field and a way.

‘Blind Or Not,  I Will Farm’

One day, the world may go to war over rice. Food is the new oil.
About 795 million of the world’s people, 200 million of them children, are hungry. Most of them are in Africa and Asia. It will cost $267 million per year to end world hunger by 2030. That is $160 annually for each person, according to the United Nations.
The business of food could be the business of the future. Most of the world is putting bricks and concrete over its fields and importing food. This could mean good business for entrepreneurs who harness the fertile red soil of Africa.
FORBES AFRICA dedicates this issue to food and the investment case.
Over 60% of the world’s arable land is in Africa, 65% of Africans work in the fields and 35% of South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) comes from agriculture and food, according to Old Mutual Investment Group’s Director of Strategic Projects, Craig Chambers.
At least $25 billion in food imports are coming into Africa; and food is wasted on the continent.
According to Duncan Vink, Joint Managing Director of UFF Agri Asset Management, 39 million hectares of agricultural land in Africa is physically suitable for irrigation but only 7% of this farmable land is currently irrigated, and in sub-Saharan Africa that figure is only 3.7%.
“There is no doubt that the opportunity within African agriculture is really vast, we have a decent pipeline of anything between $200 and $400 million in opportunities in Africa,” says Chambers.
For years, farming was going out of fashion but entrepreneurs are rediscovering it. Necessity may prove the mother of food production ripe for investment.

Food The New Oil

Even though indigenous African foods, eaten mostly in rural Africa and among low-income populations, are rarely promoted by mainstream healthy living analysts, they have some of the greatest health properties imaginable.
<h4>Preventing breast and cervical cancer</h4>
The massive shift from traditional diets to modern diets is one of the major reasons behind increasing incidences of breast cancer. Wild mushrooms and tamarind, a sweet and sour wild fruit, are among countless foods that have several powerful cancer-fighting nutrients. Both tamarind and mushrooms are rich in selenium, a nutrient widely renowned for not only preventing but also slowing the progression of cancer cells. These wonder foods are also packed with potent anti oxidants while tamarind boasts high levels of vitamin C, nutrients that work efficiently to scavenge cancer causing radicals.
Folate, also called vitamin B9, in amaranth and cowpeas, is a perfect antidote for cervical cancer. This amazing nutrient protects the cervix from the cancer-causing human papillomavirus in the event of exposure. And if cervical cancer already exists, folate immensely slows the progression of cancer cells.
<h4>For anti-aging</h4>
Indigenous African foods are endowed with unmatched anti-aging nutrients. The tartaric acid in tamarind, for example, is rich in strong antioxidants that slow down aging, keep skin looking young, and reduce the appearance of wrinkles while the amaranth plant has a unique mineral combination that delays grey hair and fights balding.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29773 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Pregnant-ladyt-etch-146x300.jpg" alt="" width="146" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Pregnant-ladyt-etch-146x300.jpg 146w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Pregnant-ladyt-etch-300x616.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Pregnant-ladyt-etch.jpg 498w" sizes="(max-width: 146px) 100vw, 146px" />
<h4>For fertility and  healthy pregnancies</h4>
The tons of folate in amaranth and cowpeas increase a woman’s chances of becoming pregnant. And during pregnancy, folate safeguards against miscarriages and is instrumental in the formation and development of the spine and the brain of the unborn child. Folate is so vital to this process that lack of folate in the diets of pregnant women has been tied to birth deformities of the spine and brain. Iron, another key nutrient abundantly present in amaranth and cowpeas, ensures the supply of blood and oxygen to both mother and unborn child.

Quick-Shot-Shutterstock.com-

Bites Of Rural Africa

Chef Vicky Gurovich simply loves what she does.
“It was meant to be. I love eating and I love feeding people. I get to do that everyday&#8230;I think I am pretty lucky,” she says.
She started young, growing up in a kitchen filled with women who were “great cooks”. Weekends were spent in the kitchen baking, with each creation more ambitious than the last.
“I think I made quite a mess, I always had rather ambitious goals in mind when I was baking as a youngster.”
Messy beginnings aside, she has had to hone her craft through her education and her time in celebrated kitchens. She studied food theory at the WITS Tech Hotel School in Johannesburg, her hometown.
“We studied the theory behind what we were cooking&#8230;we got a very good classic base which was good to build on because you understand the basics properly.”
She then took a leap, moved from Johannesburg and made her start in the industry at the four-star Shrigley Hall Hotel, an English countryside retreat. It wasn’t the life of grandeur and sophistication she imagined when she was a student but it was an important step, she says.
“I moved in a different direction but I learnt how to work quickly&#8230;it was a good first job. You walk out of hotel school with these delusions of grandeur but you get down to peeling potatoes and moving out mise en place at a rapid pace.”
It was after that first job that she took an interest in pastry-making. She got in touch with the pastry chef at the Michelangelo Hotel, in the heart of Sandton in Johannesburg, and found a way into his kitchen.
“I worked for free for about three months&#8230;I just wouldn’t leave.”
She didn’t, she joined the pastry department at the hotel for over a year.
That was the catalyst for her impressive career in pastry. She moved to the historic Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town and made her mark there, twice. Gurovich then returned to Johannesburg to lead the pastry department at the Saxon, a luxury mainstay in the city. She even won the Huletts Pastry Chef of the Year Award along the way.
Today, she leads the same department at the glittering new Four Seasons Hotel The Westcliff, perched on the hills of southern Johannesburg. She is excited about her new challenge.
“I think going forward, it’s going to be very interesting,” she says.

IMG_3631-final-b

The Sweet Life

It’s the finer things in life, like Durban summers and neo soul, that bring a smile to Vusi Kunene’s face, but nothing brings him as much joy as sushi and a good bottle of white wine. But life hasn’t always been a breeze for the 30-year-old entrepreneur.
Kunene grew up in the small town of Topfontein, in the province of Mpumalanga, but always wanted more from life. At the age of 15, he dropped out of high school and set his sights on making it big in Johannesburg.
But life in the City of Gold was tough.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3210" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/shutterstock_100783525-300x197.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="197" />
“I started doing all these odd jobs. I used to be a car guard, I’ve done construction and I’ve taken pictures at some stage in my life,” he says.
But it was working as a waiter in the hospitality industry that introduced him to the mouth-watering opportunities of food. Six years of eyeing the cooking process from afar, Kunene decided to put on the white hat and try his hand as a chef. He had ambitions to travel around the world and learn how to prepare different cuisines. It was, however, in Cape Town where he fell in love with sushi.
“If you look at the chefs behind the counter, you’ll see they are very passionate. The communication between the chef, his knife and whatever he’s doing is amazing. For them it’s not even work, it’s a lifestyle,” says Kunene.
His biggest challenge was the language barrier between him and the Japanese and Chinese chefs. So he learned everything he could about the process, history and culture through books.
After two years in Cape Town, Kunene moved back to Johannesburg where he began to work on his dream of opening his own sushi bar.
“Being a black man and saying you’re going to do sushi, people look at it and think it’s impossible. But what they were missing was [the vision to see] the opportunity in
the market.”
Kunene started small: two cutting boards, two knives and around $360. He called it The Mobile Sushi Bar.
“This showed me that an idea can be put into action with the minimum capital that you have, you don’t need a lot of money and a big sponsor,” he says.
Business quickly picked up and The Mobile Sushi Bar was making money from markets, home functions, corporate functions and food festivals.
While catering at The Africa Bike Week event, Kunene had a conversation with a customer that sparked the new name for
the business.
“Jokingly, he asked ‘which part of Japan are you from?’ and I said ‘No, we’re not the Japanese, we’re the Blackanese.’”
The name became a running joke throughout the event. It was edgy, fresh and perfectly represented the company.
Kunene decided it was time to open a sushi restaurant and the only certainty was that it would be called The Blackanese.
He found the perfect spot in the middle of the Maboneng Precinct – an urban neighborhood in downtown Johannesburg surrounded by art galleries, shops and studios.
The Blackanese opened their doors in April 2013. The first month drew in large crowds and it was clear that they were the popular new kids on the block. Kunene’s face was appearing on television shows, magazines and adverts.
But the honeymoon phase was short lived.
“Two months in and business just went dead… We were lucky to have two clients in a week.”
Uncertain of the future, Kunene fought on. He had seen too many businesses shut down during hard times, but he believed that things would soon turn around. They did.
A few months later, The Blackanese was soon back on its feet and doing better than ever. In June, the restaurant began renovations and reopened their doors in September.
Kunene sees big plans for the future of The Blackanese, including opening up a pop-up store in Japan.
Whenever inspiration is lacking and Kunene needs a little pat on the shoulder, he never has to go far. He literally walks a few steps to his apartment building, where he lives on the top floor. The view from his window says it all. Spray-painted on the face-bricked building across from him, in bold black words, it reads ‘I Love Your Work’. Surely a message from the universe.

Uncooked Fish  And Raw Ambition

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.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29618 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-062-Restaurant-day-001-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-062-Restaurant-day-001-201x300.jpg 201w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-062-Restaurant-day-001-300x448.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-062-Restaurant-day-001-600x897.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-062-Restaurant-day-001.jpg 685w" sizes="(max-width: 201px) 100vw, 201px" />
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.
&nbsp;
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.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29617 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-062-Restaurant-day-003-300x201.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="201" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-062-Restaurant-day-003-300x201.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-062-Restaurant-day-003-600x401.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-062-Restaurant-day-003-768x514.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-062-Restaurant-day-003.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />

FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-062-Restaurant-day-002

Ain’t No Flash In The Pan

Stars are still out as Dirk Schlebusch starts work at 4AM. It is the busiest time of day for him as truckloads of potatoes arrive at the Joburg Market. In the next few hours, they will be traded as commodities worth millions.
The market’s 10 halls, that span 64 hectares, are piled high with pallets of every kind of fruit and vegetable. This is the primary fresh produce exchange of South Africa as well as destinations across Africa. It is also the largest of its kind in the world.
Before noon, the dynamics of supply and demand, of middlemen’s mark-up and the whims of what nature offers up on the day, merge to determine the first price tag on fresh produce as it exits the market. Food price inflation and food security issues are becoming more and more important as population numbers explode and demand soars. It puts the links in the chain, like the passage of food through the market, under increasing scrutiny.
Schlebusch is a buyer with Wenpro, one of the most established agents at the market. They serve as middlemen between producers and buyers. He specializes in potatoes, like his father has done for 40 years.
Potatoes and onions are big sellers at the Joburg Market and together fill out their own hall. An average day sees around 1.4 million kilograms of potatoes traded.
Schlebusch has standard daily orders from big retail chains, wholesalers and the companies that process vegetables for frozen food products. He also sells to restaurants, hawkers and walk-in buyers.
“We have potatoes for everything and potatoes with every kind of price tag to suit whatever buyers are looking for.”
When determining a daily price, Schlebusch checks the quality of physical stock that arrived on the day, examining stats from previous days and pulling up stock sheets that detail the availability of potatoes throughout the market.
With fresh produce you don’t have the luxury of stockpiling for extended periods to influence the market in the hope of fetching a higher price. It’s too much of a gamble &#8211; fresh food perishes or loses quality and there’s no saying what hand nature will play.
Schlebusch says it’s ultimately down to supply and demand, the best produce still fetches the best prices and the highest bidder still wins. It’s how the market has functioned for 120 years, from the days of its origins in Newtown. The market is just a few years younger than when the city of Johannesburg itself was founded.
Schlebusch’s ear is glued to a phone, communicating with buyers and farmers throughout the day.
“It is about relationships. If you don’t give your farmers the service they expect they’ll go to another agent and if your buyers don’t get the produce at the prices they want they will also go somewhere else,” he says.
As he chats, a call comes through from an anxious farmer. A lorry has been delayed; it never made it to market on time to join the sample displays. It means an instant drop in price for the farmer as his potatoes become day-old stock.
It’s the middle of July, and at the market the bulk purchase price of Grade 1 bananas is worked out at around R4.45 a kilogram (R1=$0.10). They will end up in the mid-range supermarket upwards of R8.99 a kilo. The top-grade potatoes are selling at R46 for 10 kilograms. The price almost doubles at retailers.
The price gap from market to retail comes with everyone along the value chain taking their cut. Tracy Davids, an analyst at the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP), says day to day market prices are more volatile than what end consumers see at retail level. The price hikes come from transport and labor costs, repackaging, labeling and operational and distribution overheads that retailers incur. Added to this is the rising fuel and electricity costs in South Africa.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3039" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSCF7066-300x215.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="215" />
Davids says managing food inflation ultimately comes down to having a more robust economy.
“Food security will always be a critical issue and at the end of the day it’s the consumer who pays more and more as costs in the value chain increase, which is why we need effective value chains,” she says.
Piet van Zyl, who runs Wenpro’s fruit section, outlines some of the unique challenges of handling fresh produce. Although the value chain comes with mark-ups, disruptions can cause even more hikes. Wenpro has seven cold rooms, each runs at around $470 to $560 a month. It makes load shedding and power cuts his biggest nightmares. Agents are responsible for the upkeep of their own pallets and fleets of forklift trucks that criss-cross the halls in urgent beeps. Agents are also responsible for the health, safety and general cleanliness of their halls. It adds up to operating costs that run into the millions.
“Agents must perform and grow or the market will start taking away your floor space,” he says, waving his gloved hand, protected against the early morning chill, across the expanse of the hall that is Wenpro’s terrain.
Agents must be able to offload produce fast enough, retain the integrity of the product on the warehouse floor and sell as quickly as possible at the best price possible.
“Sometimes the agent’s buyers resort to salvage sale, it means they will make up the loss from their profits to make sure that the farmer still gets his base asking price. It keeps the farmer loyal to the agent and opens up floor space. Good buyers know where they can afford to take a loss and where they can make a profit,” says Van Zyl.
Agents take up to 7% on any deal, 4% goes directly to the agent’s buyers. The market takes a 5% cut.
It’s something that’s top of mind for Gugu Hadebe. She is the director of Egoly, the newest of the market’s three Black Economic Empowerment agents.
Hadebe says breaking into the market as a black woman was not easy. Her advantage is that she was previously employed by the Joburg Market. She understands the role of agents as well as the cultural, political and historical nuances attached to farming in South Africa. Another significant insight she had was to team up with old hands in the business, which plainly put, meant white males.
“I knew I had to have the right partners, people who have been in the game longer than I have been, people who have built relationships with farmers and buyers,” she says.
Egoly currently has eight sales staff. They concentrate on selling to hawkers rather than competing at this stage, with the likes of Wenpro, with its 350 staffers, who target bigger fish like retail giants.
“There is a big hawkers market out there that’s still growing in South Africa. People still buy from the [old lady] on the street where they pay less, where they may know the seller and they pick and choose as they like,” says Hadebe.
Each of the market’s 14 agents has to find its niche to deliver a value-add. Some do specialty items like sourcing exotic dragon fruit from South East Asia, or making sure there’s enough ginger for the explosion of sushi bars across the country. Others offer pre-packaged produce or some, like Egoly, target specific sectors within the pool of buyers.
“We don’t sell anything as a market. It is a free market system, we are just a platform where anyone can come here to sell through an agent or to buy from whomever they choose,” says Simangele Sekgobela, CEO of the Joburg Market.
Sekgobela adds that the market has had to respond to changing demands, like the key issues of traceability of produce and minimizing human handling of food.
“We’ve also had to adapt to meet international standards, which includes things like maintaining an unbroken cold chain and following standards for pesticide limits,” she says.
The adapt or die principle applies to the market, like it does to almost everything else.
“We have seen a decline in the stock that comes through the market in the past few years. Retailers are doing more direct sales from farmers and developing their own storage facilities. In the future, there will also be more virtual sales that will mean produce will not physically come through the market. It’s the reality of a free market, but you’ll never replace the market completely. You will still need the market for its facilities, its quality control and convenience of having everything under one roof,” says Sekgobela.

Why We Pay Through The Nose For Food

West African cuisine has gained increasing popularity worldwide as more indigenes at home and in the diaspora continuously share the influences that inspire their palates and dinner tables.
Minjiba Cookey is one such. She is a well-traveled Nigerian foodie, but her kitchen at home is where her heart is, and where all her culinary adventures finally lead her to.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29524 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5119-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5119-300x199.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5119-600x398.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5119-768x509.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5119-1024x678.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5119.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
She documents her passion for culinary delights and her adventures with taste, texture and color on her blog, On Nom Lagos. The idea of fusion and creating exciting food experiences is a thrill her blog intends to ignite in a diverse readership.
The blog, which draws influences from various countries, regularly shares updated recipes and images of different dishes and dessert offerings.
“I was inspired to start the blog when I moved back to Lagos a couple of years ago. I hadn’t lived in Nigeria for a very long time. I love food and use it as a tool to explore my life experiences. I thought it would be great to share my adventures with food, all the flavors I came across and the inspiration and influences they draw from. This blog really represents my love affair with food,” says Cookey.
She initially ran a small bakery out of her home kitchen in Nigeria. Cookey now intends to create and share African lifestyle convenience products that have aided her in the kitchen. She also wants to play an advisory role to restaurants.
“African cuisine is highly versatile and is enjoying a worldwide wave of popularity. West African cuisine for instance, shares a few common ideologies, yet, there are so many variations to its translation in individual countries. Africa is a rich source of inspiration for food and there is so much to explore still,” says Cookey.
Cookey’s blog currently enjoys over 14,000 hits with 406 visitors per week. She also recently teamed up with an online lifestyle publication for her column ‘Om Nom Lagos Eats’. She is also in the process of working on a television cookery show, the content being fusion food with an African twist.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29526 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5475-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5475-300x199.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5475-600x398.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5475-768x509.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5475-1024x678.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5475.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29525 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5127-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5127-300x199.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5127-600x398.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5127-768x509.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5127-1024x678.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5127.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“The aim is to produce a show that is of world-class quality, which sits comfortably alongside cookery shows from around the world that I enjoy watching myself. I have always known that food was my natural home so I am enjoying this journey, learning and growing as each day unfolds,” says Cookey.

Tag: Food

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

‘They Keep On Expecting To Get Things For Free’’