This is Kyle's Story...
By aged 29 I had practically an MBA under my belt with the experience I had gathered over the previous 11 years in business. I had grown, run and exited two companies way before it was “traditionally acceptable” for me to do so. Both endeavours had pushed me to the limits of the skills which I had managed to amass during my time running them, before crashing out of both companies in a glorious fashion.
And so we (my then girlfriend, now wife), set out with an idea to make simple, focused but really amazing food, backed by a great brand.
This is Kyle's Story...
By aged 29 I had practically an MBA under my belt with the experience I had gathered over the previous 11 years in business. I had grown, run and exited two companies way before it was “traditionally acceptable” for me to do so. Both endeavours had pushed me to the limits of the skills which I had managed to amass during my time running them, before crashing out of both companies in a glorious fashion.
And so we (my then girlfriend, now wife), set out with an idea to make simple, focused but really amazing food, backed by a great brand.
This is Kyle's Story...
By aged 29 I had practically an MBA under my belt with the experience I had gathered over the previous 11 years in business. I had grown, run and exited two companies way before it was “traditionally acceptable” for me to do so. Both endeavours had pushed me to the limits of the skills which I had managed to amass during my time running them, before crashing out of both companies in a glorious fashion.
And so we (my then girlfriend, now wife), set out with an idea to make simple, focused but really amazing food, backed by a great brand.
It was the start of 2015, and MY PLACE had begun its first sub brand, Sovlaking Delicious. It was simple, to the point and it turned heads, in a big way. By mid-year, we’d already been invited onto the Root44 market one of South Africa’s most prolific markets and from there,
our growth path really set off.
You may notice I refer to “we” quite often. During the early stages it was just me as a shareholder, but “we” refers to the collective of the team. I believe that we all work for the company and our goal is to uplift and grow it and by doing so, “we” uplift everyone that works in the company and that everyone ultimately gets to benefit from its success though security and a passion to grow and be a part of something bigger than themselves.
By end of 2015, we’d gained a huge following. Ques of people were lining up for our food and our team had grown from 2 to 5 in a matter of months. We’d gone from flipping souvlaki’s in a beat out wooden stand, to setting up a production line, likened only to the initial scenes witnessed in the movie, “the founder” Every step was meticulously set out to function as a well-oiled machine, the ques grew, the demand followed and every rebuild of our stand to help us cope with the influx ended up proving too small within a mere matter of weeks of the previous outfit. In some ways it felt a bit like baby outgrow its clothing over and over again in their first few months of childhood. We’d been breaking record sale after record sale and it began to dawn on me that we might actually have something here. “We may actually have a business…”
The end of 2015 saw the introduction of our second brand, The Mussel Monger & Oyster Bar. Its birth came from the ever rising costs associated with those initial years of growth called, “the hour glass”. An effect where your growth begins to outweigh your ability to produce free cash flow and you feel like you’re being forced into the most pressured situation you’d think your business ever has to take before the economies of scale begin to kick in. No matter how much we produced, we seemed to make the same profit we did back when we were flipping 90 units a day.
Saldanha, our home was the and still is the largest producer of oysters in South Africa and harvests 100% of all mussels sent to market. It seemed like the perfect solution. Cover the huge fuel costs of the 332km roundtrip by offsetting it with fresh oysters and mussels. We picked the two best farmers in the industry and convinced them to buy into our dream of buying direct rather than moving through one of their big distributors who would only make the product more expensive and degrade the quality of the product. No one else was doing anything like it at the time and even though competition was almost zero, we knew to get out of the starting blocks running like there were 9 other runners on our heels. We needed to be the best, set the standard and become industry pioneers.
Antonio Tonem, is widely considered the father of oysters in South Africa. He liked what we stood for and he backed us whole heartedly. It was a great move, our oyster order back then as a restaurant is today almost equal to the largest local distributors of produce.
MY VISION
I want to create a company that means something. A company that moves both people and encourages a way of thinking. I don’t just want to be ordinary, I want to be extraordinary. I want to create, shape and build a future that is meaningful and has purpose. I want to build a company that is simple, fun, and exciting and a company that benefits everyone who works in it and serves a valid purpose to all those who use it. I want to offer everyone in our company a haven to grow within. A place which they love, an environment they feel as apart of as I do. I want to create passion, purpose and I want to be able to bend and change the norm. I want to always be seen as the company that swims upstream, defies the norm and challenges standard practice.
The end of 2015 saw the introduction of our second brand, The Mussel Monger & Oyster Bar. Its birth came from the ever rising costs associated with those initial years of growth called, “the hour glass”. An effect where your growth begins to outweigh your ability to produce free cash flow and you feel like you’re being forced into the most pressured situation you’d think your business ever has to take before the economies of scale begin to kick in. No matter how much we produced, we seemed to make the same profit we did back when we were flipping 90 units a day.
Saldanha, our home was the and still is the largest producer of oysters in South Africa and harvests 100% of all mussels sent to market. It seemed like the perfect solution. Cover the huge fuel costs of the 332km roundtrip by offsetting it with fresh oysters and mussels. We picked the two best farmers in the industry and convinced them to buy into our dream of buying direct rather than moving through one of their big distributors who would only make the product more expensive and degrade the quality of the product. No one else was doing anything like it at the time and even though competition was almost zero, we knew to get out of the starting blocks running like there were 9 other runners on our heels. We needed to be the best, set the standard and become industry pioneers.
Antonio Tonem, is widely considered the father of oysters in South Africa. He liked what we stood for and he backed us whole heartedly. It was a great move, our oyster order back then as a restaurant is today almost equal to the largest local distributors of produce.
MY VISION
I want to create a company that means something. A company that moves both people and encourages a way of thinking. I don’t just want to be ordinary, I want to be extraordinary. I want to create, shape and build a future that is meaningful and has purpose. I want to build a company that is simple, fun, and exciting and a company that benefits everyone who works in it and serves a valid purpose to all those who use it. I want to offer everyone in our company a haven to grow within. A place which they love, an environment they feel as apart of as I do. I want to create passion, purpose and I want to be able to bend and change the norm. I want to always be seen as the company that swims upstream, defies the norm and challenges standard practice.
The end of 2015 saw the introduction of our second brand, The Mussel Monger & Oyster Bar. Its birth came from the ever rising costs associated with those initial years of growth called, “the hour glass”. An effect where your growth begins to outweigh your ability to produce free cash flow and you feel like you’re being forced into the most pressured situation you’d think your business ever has to take before the economies of scale begin to kick in. No matter how much we produced, we seemed to make the same profit we did back when we were flipping 90 units a day.
Saldanha, our home was the and still is the largest producer of oysters in South Africa and harvests 100% of all mussels sent to market. It seemed like the perfect solution. Cover the huge fuel costs of the 332km roundtrip by offsetting it with fresh oysters and mussels. We picked the two best farmers in the industry and convinced them to buy into our dream of buying direct rather than moving through one of their big distributors who would only make the product more expensive and degrade the quality of the product. No one else was doing anything like it at the time and even though competition was almost zero, we knew to get out of the starting blocks running like there were 9 other runners on our heels. We needed to be the best, set the standard and become industry pioneers.
Antonio Tonem, is widely considered the father of oysters in South Africa. He liked what we stood for and he backed us whole heartedly. It was a great move, our oyster order back then as a restaurant is today almost equal to the largest local distributors of produce.
MY VISION
I want to create a company that means something. A company that moves both people and encourages a way of thinking. I don’t just want to be ordinary, I want to be extraordinary. I want to create, shape and build a future that is meaningful and has purpose. I want to build a company that is simple, fun, and exciting and a company that benefits everyone who works in it and serves a valid purpose to all those who use it. I want to offer everyone in our company a haven to grow within. A place which they love, an environment they feel as apart of as I do. I want to create passion, purpose and I want to be able to bend and change the norm. I want to always be seen as the company that swims upstream, defies the norm and challenges standard practice.
We had taken our first loan against the latest rebuild of Sovlaking Delicious and tied in the investment with our spiffy new oyster bar. The first cork of champagne popped and likened to the first years of Sovlaking Delicious, the heads began to turn. It was a month in to trade, we’d grown to 12 crew and we were battling to push though the hour glass… Things were however going swimmingly. It was the beginning of Feb 2016, our brand was being recognised we had a great relationship with our creditors, trade was coming in and Sovlaking Delicious continued growing from strength to strength… And then… it happened! I’ll never forget that call from Antonio, “red tide” he said. It meant an immediate shut down of all oyster sales in South Africa. Under normal circumstances, this was a norm to expect, 2 weeks at most and we’d be back in trade.
By month 2 however of the longest red tide in recent years, we were beginning to wonder what the hell we had done and if our luck of growing a business on the back of no capital investment, had finally run out. The new oyster & mussel bar concept had gone from the next fuel injection kicker, to a complete dead weight that was steadily sinking our previously successful operations at Sovlaking Delicious. On top of it, winter was looming which meant sales would drop and we’d have to carry this ship deep into uncharted territories.
Interestingly enough, the best time to eat oysters and mussels is actually in winter. It’s when they’re at their most plumb, sweetest and best texture. To put it bluntly, they are flippen phenomenal. South Africans though, traditionally not oyster and mussel eaters, don’t know this and so we flock to restaurants over summer months, when in fact oysters are at the lower spectrum of their quality grading.
The end of April 2016 came and finally red tide subsided, we’d managed to capture the last of the autumn months of trade and successfully battled through winter, thanks to lower rain fall levels which meant higher feet at our market. We faced our first summer season and it was a bumper, I mean sky rocket stuff. I have a saying, “persistence gets you the girl” and in this case, it was a clear display of that approach to business. A fellow entrepreneur once said, “If you have a good product, it will survive the toughest of challenges.” It just takes grit and persistence and some serious navigation skills.
The end of April 2016 came and finally red tide subsided, we’d managed to capture the last of the autumn months of trade and successfully battled through winter, thanks to lower rain fall levels which meant higher feet at our market. We faced our first summer season and it was a bumper, I mean sky rocket stuff. I have a saying, “persistence gets you the girl” and in this case, it was a clear display of that approach to business. A fellow entrepreneur once said, “If you have a good product, it will survive the toughest of challenges.” It just takes grit and persistence and some serious navigation skills.
By now, we’d made it to the finals of the Cape Talk and Sage one small business awards ranking in the overall top 5 finalists in the Western Cape. We were competing against big up and coming names like YOCO and our efforts in business got us recognition in various press articles like that of FINWEEK magazine, who featured us in a four page spread as “The food stall that could” obviously referencing that we could become the food stall concept that could make it big. We’d just had offers to move our oyster bars in to a permanent location in Stellenbosch at DeWaren Markt as well as Sea Points Mojo market.
Souvlaking Delcious was breaking all sorts of sales records. Our teams had grown to 14 crew. Country and life magazine ranked us the best food offerings on our particular market and the INSIDE GUIDE has ranked both our food stalls as their best offering on the Root44 Market as well as the Hermanus Country Market Without knowing the brands and our locations at the two markets were even linked) SEFA South Africa’s Small Enterprise Development Agency was backing us financially which came to much delight as we had completely debunked traditional myths that white owned businesses weren’t supported by our new government.
If there’s one thing I love, it’s breaking the narrative and false perceptions of people. I am in no way saying that we get 100% support from our government, but a great entrepreneur doesn’t give up in pursuit of his or her thought. You battle whatever is thrown at you so that you can continue beating the drum. Entrepreneurship is not a goal, it’s a never ending journey chosen by individuals who want to learn and become more. You have to be like an ever flowing river, place a damn in front of me, I will go over it, place a rock in my path and I will go around it. In this case, the only people willing to lend us money was the government and they backed us wholeheartedly.
But that's not the end of Kyle's Story..
By the first of March 2017 we’d opened our new flagship oyster bar in the heart of Stellenbosch and our bar in Mojo Market was about to take flight on the 27th of April after we’d received backing and buy in from our first outside shareholder. Jaap Du Toit, co-founder of PSG Konsult loved what we were doing graciously asked to join the start up after making it clear that he wanted to be a part of this experience and journey. He liked what we were doing and what we stood for. He made us a wonderful offer. His involvement gave an entire new perspective on business and how we as a company approached our entire outlook on what the future of “MY PLACE” may in fact be able to look like one day... Things were swimmingly again and the future couldn’t have looked brighter.
But that's not the end of Kyle's Story...
By the first of March 2017 we’d opened our new flagship oyster bar in the heart of Stellenbosch and our bar in Mojo Market was about to take flight on the 27th of April after we’d received backing and buy in from our first outside shareholder. Jaap Du Toit, co-founder of PSG Konsult loved what we were doing graciously asked to join the start up after making it clear that he wanted to be a part of this experience and journey. He liked what we were doing and what we stood for. He made us a wonderful offer. His involvement gave an entire new perspective on business and how we as a company approached our entire outlook on what the future of “MY PLACE” may in fact be able to look like one day... Things were swimmingly again and the future couldn’t have looked brighter.
But that's not the end of Kyle's Story...
By the first of March 2017 we’d opened our new flagship oyster bar in the heart of Stellenbosch and our bar in Mojo Market was about to take flight on the 27th of April after we’d received backing and buy in from our first outside shareholder. Jaap Du Toit, co-founder of PSG Konsult loved what we were doing graciously asked to join the start up after making it clear that he wanted to be a part of this experience and journey. He liked what we were doing and what we stood for. He made us a wonderful offer. His involvement gave an entire new perspective on business and how we as a company approached our entire outlook on what the future of “MY PLACE” may in fact be able to look like one day... Things were swimmingly again and the future couldn’t have looked brighter.
I’d like to give a very special thanks to Helena Schoeman of SEFA who bought into our idea way back before we we’re anything to take note of. She saw my passion and tenacity and backed it, convincing her superiors to finance our company. Without her, none of this would be possible. She now lives on through her son and daughter after a long battle with cancer. We owe her so much. May she rest in peace knowing that she left the world in a better way than what she found it.