24/09/2021
BHUT’ MADLISA’S KITCHEN MOVES TO WAKHANDA & CELEBRATES SOUTH AFRICA’S ENTREPRENEURIAL HERITAGE.
When the Covid-19 pandemic crept into our lives more than a year ago, a small South African delivery-only restaurant called Bhut’ Madlisa’s Kitchen (BMK), which specialises in traditional South African cuisine, opened its virtual doors to customers in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, selling home-made food.
Fast forward to 2021 and BMK celebrated its South African entrepreneurial spirit on Heritage Day (Friday, 24 September 2021) by re-opening its sponsored cloud kitchen & shared facility in Joburg’s “coolest” neighbourhood, Melville, as part of the Wakhanda Food Accelerator Programme (Wakhanda). The launch event was, however, held at Outline Café in Orlando East, Soweto. Festivities, under COVID-19 protocol, are expected to continue well into the night as well as into the long weekend.
“When the first hard lockdown was enforced in 2020 many people were left isolated, vulnerable and disconnected from their loved ones. Our aim was to connect people, families and communities to their roots through our delicious food.” says business manager and founder of Bhut’ Madlisa’s Kitchen, Tshepo Tsotsotso.
Bhut’ Madlisa’s Kitchen started by selling authentic and tasty South African meals, on weekends after identifying a gap in the market, during one of the harshest Covid-19 lockdowns. Their three-day menu would be distributed on Thursdays and customers had the option of either pre-ordering their weekend meals or they could easily place an order on the morning of the day they wanted to indulge in their BMK experience. Orders and deliveries were managed on the business’s WhatsApp platform to drive engagement and traffic.
“Most of our customers have busy lifestyle and work schedules and the BMK value proposition speaks to their needs: Fresh, tasty, home-made, South African food, made by safe hands and delivered to their doorsteps on time. Plugging into the WhatsApp and Facebook channels just made business sense as we did not have a marketing budget,” adds Tsotsotso.
The majority of BMK’s customers reside and work in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg and the move to Wakhanda’s cloud kitchen facility will introduce BMK to a broader and diverse community, offer BMK possible opportunities to collaborative with other emerging restaurant owners as well as the opportunity to scale-up in a controlled manner, while receiving professional guidance from experienced mentors. Management is confident that BMK will be able to retain its current customer base while acquiring new audiences from Melville and surrounding areas.
“In essence, we are moving from a backroom kitchen to a technologically and sophisticated cloud kitchen. Re-launching the brand on Heritage Day is just a priceless and wonderful milestone following weeks and months of developing an un-matched product. We are truly grateful to Wakhanda Food Accelerator for backing us,” concludes Tsotsotso.
Bhut’ Madlisa’s Kitchen will be based at the Melville cloud kitchen facility between Fridays and Mondays (10:00 – 20:00). BMK will also operate, on a three-month trial basis, from Outline Café, Soweto, between Mondays and Sundays (12:00 – 20h00).
The kitchen will officially open to customers next week Friday, following this weekend’s test run event.
Ends.
