It was master chef Jamie Oliver who inspired Andrew Leeuw, at the age of 14, to become a chef and eventually start his street food enterprise.
Leeuw’s business story could be a hit Netflix series. It has all the dramatic highs and lows of a young man trying to realise his dreams. But the reality of his story shines a spotlight on the unglamorous side of entrepreneurship in South Africa and highlights why entrepreneurs deserve better support.
As a disadvantaged black South African, nothing came easy for Leeuw. From finding funding for his French cooking course in the UK to starting up his own food truck business in 2009 with money borrowed from his brother. He called his start-up Sumting Fresh, the name suggested by his mother to signify something new and innovative.
It certainly was all that and more. In 2015, Sumting Fresh was named one of the Ten amazing food market stalls across the world by The Guardian, which praised its food as an “artisan treat” and touted it as the largest and most successful black-owned street vendor in South Africa. The business posted an annual revenue of R17 million and employed 47 staff. Yet a few years later, Sumting Fresh slumped. What went wrong?
“It’s easy to dream it, but it’s hard to do it,” says Leeuw, whose story was recently captured in a new case study published by Henley Business School Africa. Working with a partner — Hezron Louw — it took them more than three years to become profitable and to start earning acclaim.
But behind the success and the vibe and their delicious trademark meals, there was another story. It reflected the darker side of starting up a business, especially for a black South African with limited business experience and expertise and little business legacy — the knowledge you get from family, friends or peers who know or understand what running a business is all about.
Many entrepreneurs don’t come from families where parents had shops or businesses, and they are not taught the practicalities of running or managing an enterprise in school. There is no one to mentor and guide them. They have to build their business while they are running it through trial and error — akin to building a plane while trying to fly it. Not surprisingly, this can often lead to a crash-and-burn scenario. Between 70% and 80% of all small businesses in South Africa fail within the first five years of operation.
Then there is also the emotional burden of being an entrepreneur. Not a lot is said about the grit and resilience needed to keep an entrepreneurial enterprise going. It requires high emotional intelligence, or EQ, which is increasingly valued in corporate spaces as well. As one Harvard Business Review article states, understanding and managing emotions is the strongest predictor of performance, making it potentially more important than IQ and technical skills when it comes to leadership in business and entrepreneurship.
This is because those with emotional intelligence are more likely to be calm under pressure, are able to resolve conflict faster and have better relationships with others. Critically, they are better at managing themselves as well, recognising when their own stress levels are too high, or they are in danger of burning out.
Not surprisingly, considering the economic climate, the social and development landscape in which many entrepreneurs find themselves, South African entrepreneurs are facing high levels of stress. When the SAB Foundation launched a counselling and support programme for entrepreneurs in 2024, the organisers were surprised by the huge response. As one entrepreneur put it: “We go through our daily life burdened with guilt whilst trying to pursue our dreams. Getting to listen to other people going through a similar journey as you and knowing that it’s okay to not be okay is uplifting. Words are just not enough.”
Increasingly, local founders and businesses that have grown beyond small enterprises are giving back to South African entrepreneurs, like ASI Financial Services, for example, with interventions to help scale entrepreneurship culture. Other big companies, like Old Mutual, Red Bull and Standard Bank, have also launched initiatives targeting various stages of the entrepreneurial journey. But these are but a drop in the ocean in terms of what is needed to support entrepreneurs in South Africa.
Research shows that loneliness is often a part of the entrepreneurial journey, even when it becomes profitable. As Leeuw himself says, “Entrepreneurship is not like it is in the movies, it is highly stressful!”
The Sumting Fresh story shows in heartbreaking detail how easily a successful business can fall apart. Tension can develop with a partner and staff members. A lack of financial acumen allows maladministration and malfeasance to take root.
For Leeuw, it didn’t help that they’d opened a brick-and-mortar store in Houghton, Johannesburg, which couldn’t get off the ground. The business started to lose revenue due to internal theft and external robberies. By 2017, Leeuw’s health began to suffer, and he was hospitalised, with the business facing closure in 2019.
Coming back from failure and ill-health was difficult but Leeuw says he never lost his passion for cooking and bringing joy to others through good food. He decided to return to the roots of his success with a stand at the 4ways Farmers Market. The business is doing well again and he is thinking of opening several physical retail outlets across Johannesburg.
But he is cautious when it comes to expansion now that he’s cognisant of the dangers of scaling too quickly and losing sight of his health, the core of his business and the purpose of his enterprise.
His story highlights that, among other things, South Africa’s entrepreneurs require a more supportive network as well as practical business knowledge along with expertise around systems and how to operate a business. They also need insight into the emotional strain they will be under as an entrepreneur.
Fifteen years since launching his business, Leeuw is back to making his famous food. For him, it was never about the money to begin with, and while no entrepreneur can run a successful business without making money, they certainly cannot do it if they’ve lost the love for their business. His story provides important context and insight to all of us keen to encourage entrepreneurship as a way of addressing unemployment and driving success in South Africa.
Nishan Pillay is a digital transformation and leadership expert, entrepreneur, academic and international speaker. He serves on the faculty of Henley Business School South Africa and is the author of the Henley case study, Sumting Fresh: Street food entrepreneur to restaurateur