Andrew Smith and Shane Dryden had no idea that Yuppiechef, a business they formed in a garage in 2006, would be sold for R470 million to the Mr Price Group 15 years later.
Smith said many people have had the perception that things were going to change at the company now that ownership has changed.
“We spoke to our team and told them we’re not the company we were five years ago, so change is inevitable,” he said.
“One of our values is growth. If you are not growing, you’re dying. We can’t have growth as one of our values and resist change,” he added.
To maintain the ethos of their business, Smith said it’s important for consumers to realise that the Mr Price Group does not want to turn Yuppiechef into Mr Price.
“They’ve got hundreds of stores, if they want more of that, they will open more of them. They brought us on board because they want us to keep on doing what we’re doing,” he said.
The pair said they knew it was time to sell the business when hard lockdown hit South Africa.
“Just like in the game of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, we were faced with a double or nothing choice. Do you risk it all to keep on going? We wanted to stop playing double or nothing,” Smith said.
Dryden added: “We were prepared for a sale a long time ago. We learned that there are seasons and windows of opportunity for selling. There was a window of opportunity and we took it.”
The pair have been friends since the early 2000s and had been bitten by the proverbial entrepreneurial bug. Their first business venture was the creation of bug zappers in 2005 - an electric racket used to kill insects. They also came up with an idea for a rat zapper and sold flag kits.
Smith and Dryden said they were driven by the idea of not having to sell their time by the hour and chose to come up with products.
“The idea was to have an e-commerce site, but back then e-commerce barely existed,” Smith said.
He added: “We sold about 10 000 bug zappers at a time that e-commerce wasn’t that big, but it showed us that if we could sell that, we could do e-commerce.”
Dryden said after the bug zapper, they started selling kitchen tools because of their passion for cooking.
“We thought we could start by selling 12 kitchen tools, which was a big jump,” he said.
It was only in 2011, that Smith and Dryden had received their first salary from the business.
Smith said starting a new business was a lot like planting spinach.
“Every time the first leaf grows, you’re so hungry that you cut it off and eat it. What made Yuppiechef a success was that there were five years before we needed anything from it,” he said.
Dryden added: “In 2006, we had to convince ourselves and people that this was worth taking seriously, that was our biggest concern.”
Dryden said the biggest motivator among the challenges they faced, was the freedom attached to building their brand.
“We wanted to have a brand that we were proud of. Selling bug zappers was not that cool,” he said.
“When we started to form the brand, there was a feeling that we were doing the right thing,” he added.
Dryden said he received a flash of inspiration for the brand’s name.
“The word yuppie was a very outdated word but people knew what it was. We had magnets given to chefs at the food and wine expo that said, ‘I’m a Yuppiechef’”, he said.
He added: “They kept asking for me and there was an instant connection with the brand. It felt quirky, fresh and new.”
When they were establishing the brand, Smith said consistency and pervasiveness were key to curating their brand.
“The curation of the brand was that people get consistency every time. We knew what the voice and look of the brand were and we wanted it to be the same whenever people encountered us,” he said.
Dryden added: “We were encouraged by Jonathan Cherry from Cherry Flava, that we change the world one customer at a time, by word of mouth.”
Over the years, Yuppiechef has become known for the handwritten cards that accompany each online order.
“Our first customer was Denise Gunner. We couldn’t help but personally thank her for her order. We wrote a note on a piece of paper and placed it in a silver Merrypak envelope,” Smith said.
He added: “Handwriting cards is a deliberate choice. It costs us money but we think about how we would like to be treated.”
Dryden said Yuppiechef’s reputation for customer service wasn’t deliberate.
“The cards are just a representation of how we feel about the customer and genuinely thanking them for buying with us,” he said.
Smith said defining their business strategy was at the heart of their business’ early days.
“We chose what we were going to do and what we would outsource. The things we do ourselves is what we built our strategy on,” he said.
He added: “Your strategy is about how you choose to compete.”
A strategy that worked out well for the duo.