It is with great sadness and regret that we note the passing of ANOTHER of Johannesburg’s restaurants… This week the Firehouse Steakmaster in Illovo joined a growing list of casualties in the industry and although cause of death has not yet been established, you can be certain that at least one of our suspects , …

Crime thrillers are all the rave right now and although I am no James Patterson or Lincoln Child, the slow but painful death of the South African Restaurant Industry makes for some pretty interesting reading. “Death?” you ask, am I not being a little too dramatic, a little too severe… I think not! Restaurants are …

In preparation for the next chapter on Who Is Killing The South African Restaurant Industry where I am going to concentrate on the role the staff are playing in the demise of the industry, I have decided to introduce you to that most wonderful of creatures… The Restaurant Waiter. At some stage in our lives …

Arrived at the new and almost completed Rosebank hub this morning, situated between the Zone and the area that once housed Tijuana 220 and Baccarat to discover the place had changed quite dramatically since my days of body shots, Corona Beer and Gypsy Kings. You see back in the day, you could almost count the …

Let’s face it… It is not a question of whether you use social media in your marketing strategy; it is simply a question of how well you do it! The rules of marketing have changed and the marketing managers don’t like it very much. Raised on a diet of outward bound marketing and a “we …

One of your waiters just dropped a cup of coffee over a customer, he is wearing an old tatty T Shirt that has certainly seen better days and not too much Sunlight soap BUT he is performing about it like he just dropped two grand at the Ed Hardy shop. What is a poor restaurant …

No one is really sure who coined the phrase but some say it was Baron Rothschild, the scion of the Rothschild banking family. What it means is that when fear is at its highest, one must toss aside the bearish feeling and turn bullish. Excellent when you have a couple of billion in the bank …

There are only two professions that I am aware of where 1) someone gets hired to masquerade as someone who can’t say no 2) a person gets paid to do what other people consider a pleasure and 3) they usually declare themselves disgusted afterward. And I should tell you that the ‘other’ one is a …

When it comes to predicting the future trends of the South African restaurant industry, I have got it down to a science… Make as many predictions as possible and with a little luck, people will only remember the ones I got right. Honestly, making predictions in this economy is as easy as nailing jelly to …