Читать книгу From Corner Café to JSE Giant - Carié Maas - Страница 10

CHAPTER 6

Bring in fresh blood of my blood

The man who would one day become the chairman of both Steers Holdings and Famous Brands nearly ended up Down Under.

“After I had applied for a South African visa for the fourth time, I also applied to Australia and was granted one for a year,” says Panagiotis Halamandaris, or Peter, as he is known locally. But the tales of his first cousin Nick convinced him that the City of Gold was the place to be, and he applied for a visa one last time, this time with success.

Like the Halamandres family, Peter came from Livadoxori, Lemnos. Nobody is quite sure about the exact family link, but George Halamandres and Peter’s grandfather were probably cousins. Peter’s father, Nicolaos, a carpenter, had to support a wife and four children, as well as an uncle and an aunt. He made tables, floors, roofs, windows and ceilings without machinery, as electricity only came to Lemnos after 1964.

At the age of 12 Peter had to leave his stone-built home with its roof of red tiles to walk the 12 km to senior school in Myrina, the island’s main town. He took off his shoes and tied them around his neck, because his mother, Ourania, who had grown up as an orphan, didn’t want him or his brothers to damage their shoes.

This distance meant that he had to stay in Myrina from Monday to Friday, and share a rudimentary room with two or three other boys. They had to fend for themselves, and, with no bathroom or toilet, they had to use a central “outhouse” in town if nature called, be it summer or winter. During the snow-covered winters they had only a small diesel heater for warmth, and the light of an oil lamp to study by. Peter’s mother used to send a basket of food along with the bus that ran once a day.

George Halamandres was certainly not going to allow a spoilt brat to help in one of his restaurants. Instead, he welcomed a young man who had worked the cotton fields with his brothers during the school holidays.

“We were very independent from a young age, and of course we had fights daily in that little room in Myrina,” laughs Peter.

All he really wanted to do as a boy was to play soccer. So, during holidays he cleverly chose the cotton field where he could finish work the earliest, and during school terms he waited until the daily bus to Livadoxori had left town before he started kicking the ball with his friends. He always feared that someone might tell his father, who was also the mayor of Livadoxori, that his son was passing his time away from his books.

“We had to pass Classical Greek on top of Modern Greek, or we would fail,” he recalls. “But we played soccer until we couldn’t see the ball any more.” Ironically, it was not all that soccer which prevented Peter from passing the entrance examination that would enable him to finish his matric in Athens. He passed maths, but failed the sports exam and had to do his final year on Lemnos.

After school he took to the seas to get a captain’s diploma and expand his horizons, but he soon realised that 45 days at sea at a time was no better than being cooped up in a small town. He returned to Livadoxori and was conscripted into the army for 27 months. After that, he was offered a position in government but saw no future for himself within the military junta that had been running Greece since 1967.

Peter had no capital to start his own business, so he worked for his father for two years before arriving in South Africa on June 23, 1971.

Peter says that he was most unprepared for what awaited him in the new country. “We knew nothing.”

From the airport he was taken to Seven Steer, where he was put straight to work. It was only later that he could sleep off his jet lag. He would stay under George’s roof at 30 De La Rey Street until he got married two years later.

George was very relieved that Peter had come, says John Halamandres. “My brother wasn’t coping with his workload and my father trusted family members more than outsiders.”

John doesn’t want to mention names, but the trouble was that George sometimes got burnt when he trusted outsiders. A staff member of Greek descent, who kept the keys to the safe, once stole his sauce recipes and opened his own steakhouse. He also poached the person who made the sauces and thus the know-how behind the recipes. “What may sound petty comes into perspective if you take into account that the Famous Brands turnover from 20 sauces today is R65 million a year,” says John.

From that first morning at work, Peter sat next to George at the till at Seven Steer in Highlands North. He had to start picking up the new language because he couldn’t speak a word of English.

“My first salary was R126, but I was eating and sleeping for free, and the currency was still strong; one could get $1.26 to the rand,” remembers Peter.

October 1971 saw another milestone for George: the opening of the Long­horn Steer, the forerunner of the Longhorn group. Stanley Adelson, who had started as a casual waiter at the Seven Steer at the age of 17, and who had helped to open the first two Spurs in Cape Town, was ready for bigger things and wanted to start his own business.

“I spoke to Georgie about a franchise, we came to an agreement and Long­horn was launched. I had to borrow R5 000 from my greengrocer, a Mr Rama,” Stanley remembers. “Then I had to choose between the names Longhorn, Bighorn or Shorthorn!” he says with a chuckle.

The Longhorn Steer opened in the Bryanston Shopping Centre with the help of Brian Aronson. The first month’s sales amounted to R6 000, with a profit of R1 000.

John remembers that when Sandton City was built in 1973, the centre management contacted them about a steakhouse concept. Because Bryanston was so close, George offered the franchise to Stanley. Stanley signed a lease with Liberty Life Properties and opened a restaurant with the same name, Longhorn Steer, in October 1973.

Another branch opened in Birnam and soon four more followed. “Stanley was a good operator and Longhorn became very successful,” says John.

But jumping back to 1971, Peter Halamandaris stayed at Seven Steer until December, when he joined the central kitchen in Jeppe. He also helped out in Braamfontein for a month when the operator there needed to go to Greece, and on 8 February, 1972 he returned to Seven Steer, which had moved to Berea.

This move wasn’t by choice. According to his nephew Peter Caradas, George got into a bit of a disagreement with the owner of the Balfour Park Shopping Centre, Louis Sachs. Louis saw how well the restaurant was doing and he wanted George to create an opportunity for his son as well.

George, of course, wanted to know what Louis’ son knew about steakhouses. One thing led to another and George thought he should tell the man that money isn’t everything and that “you can’t take it with you”. “Then I’d rather not go!” was the answer he got. And with that, George punched Louis on the chin. Being a boxer, he broke the man’s jaw.

“It goes without saying that renewing the lease was completely out of the question,” says John drily.

Peter Halamandaris says he learnt a lot at Seven Steer. “I worked from nine in the morning until two in the morning, seven days a week (on Mondays he helped to clean the steakhouse), and then I would go and drop off the workers in Alexandra with a bakkie.” He was shown how to make the sauces, and he was learning English from the customers.

The move to Berea wasn’t quite what George had wished for.

“My father had great hopes, as there were many apartment buildings with lots of residents, but he was wrong about the customers,” says John. There were no families, just single people, and no parking. “The singles didn’t match the profile of our consumer base and the restaurant did mediocre business at best,” remembers John.

Peter Halamandaris wasn’t going to stay in Berea either. His uncle said he couldn’t live with him anymore once he was married, and that on his salary he wouldn’t be able to support his wife anyway. Peter started to look around for a small business opportunity of his own.

John turned 19 in 1972 and was supposed to join the air force after finishing his schooling at Damelin. But because of the hearing problem he had inherited from his mother, he was discharged after only a week.

The young man was ready to travel the world. His friend Colin at the Bellevue takeaway, a hippy with long hair and takkies, decided to go with John when he took a gap year in the United Kingdom.

This was the chance that Peter was waiting for, and he bought the Bellevue Steers in Bezuidenhout Street from John and Colin. “I borrowed 50 per cent of the asking price to give to Colin, and the other half I owed John. He was very lenient about the loan and even allowed me to buy a second-hand Mazda 626 before I paid him back.”

Peter was to make a great success of Bellevue. “The restaurant was so small that John’s mother had to deliver the precooked chips; there was no space to prepare them,” he remembers. He was at the back, and after he married, his wife, Soula, served at the front.

“You have to try to make friends with a customer; you can’t see them as someone to take money from,” he says. “We knew nothing about food,” he says, but his uncle George taught them everything he knew.

During those early years they only closed for Christmas, because they had to by law, and for New Year. The only other time they closed was when the fridge broke down and they couldn’t store any meat.

It was a difficult time for Peter, because at first he didn’t even own a car. A lot of franchisees make the mistake of thinking that the cash in the till is theirs, Peter says. “You first have to pay everyone else, and then, if there is something left, it’s yours.”

“I was a bad franchisee,” he says, as he was convinced he could buy raw materials cheaper elsewhere than from the central kitchen. “I knew all the tricks!” he laughs.

Antonia Phepi, who still works in the canteen at the Famous Brands head office, started working for Peter in the kitchen and as cashier during that time. She says he used to tell staff: “If you want something, ask me, but just don’t steal from me.”

Meanwhile, John was staying with his cousin Arthur, who had become a yoga teacher in the United Kingdom. John practised yoga and travelled around Europe.

“I had a great time, but after nine months I had to return to South Africa. My father had written to me that they needed me back in the country,” says John. On his return, he started running the Seven Steer in Berea. But he wasn’t the only one whose arrival was eagerly anticipated.