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CHAPTER 5

Ham or no ham, it’s a burger

George Halamandres was always a man with a plan, says his daughter-in-law Barbara, and in the late 1960s, it was time to introduce yet another American idea to South Africa. With the Burger Ranch franchise, George put the humble hamburger centre stage.

Nobody seems able to remember quite when Burger Ranch began. Peter Caradas’s brother Johnny claims it was in 1967, but others believe it may have been as late as 1969.

According to Wikipedia the first Burger Ranch was opened in Rothsay Street, Benoni. The website calls it “a steakhouse with beautiful wooden Western-style benches, quality rectangular porcelain plates and stainless-steel cutlery”. Burger Ranch quickly spread across the country.

George’s son John remembers that each restaurant had a sit-down area, as well as a counter for takeaways. “It was a type of a diner.”

Charlie Scott and Barbara’s mother, Del McFarlane, owned the second one, in Rosettenville. A Harold Menkin is said to have opened the third one in Alberton, and Johnny Caradas says others opened in Bezuidenhout Valley and Kensington. Peter Caradas had one at the corner of Small and Pretorius Streets in the Johannesburg city centre. Fortis Ntinias, who came from Lemnos and worked at the Seven Steer with his wife, opened his own Burger Ranch in Blairgowrie after a stint at Black Steer. There would also eventually be 13 in Durban.

“Fortis was incredibly loyal to George, and he was one of the first Greeks to be brought out [from Lemnos] to help in the outlets,” recalls Barbara.

“My cousin George Poulos was responsible for the Durban restaurants,” remembers John. “They used to own an enormously successful roadhouse in Albert Park in Durban before that.”

Once again the concept and brand name were very American, says John. “My father was very much against the term ‘hamburger’, as he said it gave the wrong impression. The burgers weren’t made of ham,” he says.

Popular sources differ around this issue too. It is said that a ground beef patty in a roll was named after Hamburg in Germany (or Hamburg, New York), just as the frankfurter was named after Frankfurt and the wiener after Vienna in Austria. There are claims that the fast-food archetype was first sold at a country fair in America, in 1885 or 1890.

George Halamandres was also visionary enough to look beyond South Africa’s borders. He opened a Burger Ranch branch in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1971, years before it became fashionable for South Africa or the world to invest in Africa.

The first Burger Ranch in Israel opened in 1971 on Ben Yehuda Street in Tel Aviv. Barry Scop was the franchisee. Barbara Halamandres remembers that Barry brought her and Georgie a present to congratulate them on the birth of their daughter, Stacey, in March 1970.

Unfortunately this franchise relationship wasn’t to last, as the Yom Kippur War broke out in October 1973. Alan Horwitz, who was a minor shareholder in Burger Ranch at one stage, remembers that the Israeli Defence Forces commandeered Burger Ranch delivery vehicles, causing the franchise to curtail its operations. “In our franchise agreement there was a clause that said if a business closes down for any reason, the agreement terminates,” says John. That meant the franchisee was able to pull out of the contract and stop paying franchise fees.

After the war, a manager of one of the Burger Ranch branches, Ron Lapid, convinced Barry Scop to resurrect the brand, according to Alan. That was the beginning of the “new” Burger Ranch in Israel. George Halamandres’s brainchild grew from strength to strength in Israel, and the official logo still remains a steer. The restaurants still sport the wooden finishes that featured in the original Burger Ranches in South Africa. The group has 107 branches and competes mainly with McDonald’s Israel. The Burger Ranch company became so strong that in 2008 it bought out Burger King Israel, and rebranded all the Burger King outlets as Burger Ranch in 2010.

In 1970, Stacey’s birth was the highlight of George Halamandres’s life and as a child she would spend a lot of time at the commissary he was about to open.

Back in South Africa, George’s steak and burger restaurants were doing so well that the kitchen at Seven Steer was becoming too small to handle the manufacturing of all the sauces. George owned a property in Jeppe, opposite the police station at the corner of Market and Betty Streets, and in 1971 he opened a commissary there, an American term for a central kitchen. This was registered as Fast Food Systems but traded as Steers Famous Foods, and it was to here that the manufacturing operations moved.

“We also opened the first fast-food outlet at the front end of the central kitchen in Market Street,” says John. “This was called Steers, the direct parent of what we have today under the Steers brand.”

Moses Masia, who is a supervisor of collections at Famous Brands, says he started working in the Jeppe kitchen on 3 March 1971: “There was a man called Jacob who used to yell at me for slicing the food too thinly, but I didn’t worry; I wanted to learn.” He remembers his wage was R32 a month, “but they also cooked for us, chicken and meat”. He says a Steers double burger at the fast-food outlet cost 70c, chips 25c and an ice-cream 5c.

Lulu Balaskas was in charge; working with her were Poppy Halamandres, Ida Hollander, the mother of the draughtsman Terry Hollander, and a friend of the family.

The Jeppe address would play a major role in the history of the company, but today it’s hard to imagine what it must have looked like, given the decline of the area. There is still a fast-food outlet, but maybe Savva Centra isn’t the type of establishment where a typical Steers customer would nowadays buy a burger; nor can you imagine a sauce and fruit juice factory where Excellent Jeppe Clothing is now situated.

Eleni Halepopoulos can paint the picture, though. She owned the Steers at the front end of the kitchen from 1992 until 1994, buying it with insurance money she received after surviving the sinking of the cruise ship Oceanos off the Wild Coast in 1991. “Everything used to be so clean, and they were so busy in the kitchen,” she says. “For the sit-down customers we served food at the tables under a roof on the veranda, and there were beautiful plants all around.” She says the place was a gold mine.

John says his father came up with the idea of refining the burger takeaway concept as the takeout sales from the steakhouse restaurants kept on growing. George realised there was definitely customer demand for quality takeaway food.

The introduction of quicker food production was another first in South Africa, according to John. “My father wanted to serve food faster than the half an hour it took a restaurant to put a burger on the table.” And the serv­ice offered was quite fast, says John. It was a daytime operation only, but it was very successful.

George opened a takeaway outlet in Bellevue, Johannesburg, and John, who was just finishing school, was also a partner. “My friend Colin Trauberman, who was five years my senior and who used to be a casual waiter at Seven Steer, became the operator.” John regards this takeaway burger outlet as the real beginning of the Steers story, and two other very important owners who were to follow in his footsteps share that opinion. One of them was already on his way over from Lemnos, the Greek island John’s grandparents also hailed from.