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Tshidi Tau displays her homemade chutneys, mixed vegetable pickles and seasonings at a Johannesburg farmers' market
On a chilly spring morning in Johannesburg, Tshidi Tau packs bottles of homemade sauces and pickled vegetables to sell at a farmers’ market on the outskirts of the city.
The well-known South African entrepreneur has experienced both the highs and lows of life and business. Six years ago she was the owner of the first Chinese restaurant in Soweto, Johannesburg’s largest urban area, inhabited predominantly by black South Africans. Tau saw her fortunes change when a lucrative business deal went sour. Down, but not out, her indomitable spirit led her to start up a small operation selling sauce and pickles, which had been popular items in her Chinese food business.
Despite the challenges, Tau said she hasn’t abandoned her hope of resuscitating her Chinese restaurant, and currently caters for events and private functions.
Chinese odyssey
Like many South Africans, Tau didn’t know much about China and Chinese food until she experienced it firsthand in 2004. That year she made the decision to teach English in Liuzhou City, south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, after being drawn by her curiosity about China’s people and culture.
For the first few weeks, life in China proved to be very difficult for Tau.
She struggled to get used to the taste of green tea and sweet bread, and ate most of her meals at McDonald’s and KFC. Later her Chinese friends taught her how to cook local dishes at home. “They took me to the street markets and showed me places where I could buy vegetables,” Tau said.
“They showed me how to cook rice and how to prepare dishes on a gas stove.”
On weekends, she would often be invited to their homes, enjoying and learning more about Chinese cuisine until she became familiar with many of the local ingredients and cooking methods.
“The time I spent in China was wonderful,” Tau said. “I was amazed by the type of food they ate. Chinese food is light on the stomach, highly nutritious, delicious and non-fattening.”
Soweto meets China
When Tau returned from China at the end of 2004, she had the idea to open a Chinese restaurant in Soweto, but she didn’t have the start-up funds for the venture.
During that time, she continued teaching and began preparing Chinese food at home after work. She was soon advertising her food via flyers and selling Chinese food to businesses in the area. Things took off in a big way after interviews in a local newspaper and TV station spread the word about her unique choice of cuisine and orders for her Chinese dishes came pouring in.
In 2007, Tau founded the Tshiditsoe Food and Eatery, a Chinese restaurant specializing in chaofan (fried rice) and chaomian (fried noodles). She sourced the required vegetables and ingredients from Cyrildene, Johannesburg’s Chinatown, and based her business on the concept of offering customers “delicious, healthy and affordable” food. Tau said each dish was enough to serve two people and cost only $2.50. The business boomed with clientele made up of tourists and locals curious to try Chinese food.
Reversal of fortune
As Tau was about to expand, the businessman who held the liquor license selling drinks to her customers and who paid half her rent, pulled out, and she was forced to close down. In South Africa, people often enjoy some form of alcohol with their meals and without this service Tau’s business took a big knock.
At the end of 2007, she closed the restaurant doors, reverting to serving takeaway meals from her home.
A year later, Tau received an offer from a highly placed woman in the banking sector with a plan to train and equip young people to operate their own mobile kitchens cooking and selling Chinese food. It was set up as a joint venture, with Tau providing mentorship. With funding secured the project was launched and after training 48 youngsters, the curtain came down after Tau discovered her business partner had stolen the funding for the project.
With all her money gone, Tau lost her business and her house as she couldn’t keep up mortgage payments. “I had to leave my two daughters with my mother.” Tau said. “I cried when I was alone.”
From the experience she learned to be more careful about choosing business partners and that pain, or failure, is often the best teacher. .
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Businesswoman Tshidi Tau, founder and owner of Tshiditsoe Food and Eatery and a finalist in local radio 702's 2013 Small Business Awards |
Comeback trail
“For the next three years I struggled to put my life together,” Tau said. “I told myself I won’t be easily defeated.”
She returned to teaching to provide for her family and began making sauces at home, selling to close friends. A chance meeting with the Small Enterprise Development Agency (Seda), an agency of the South African Department of Trade and Industry, led to assistance in lab testing and packaging of her sauces.
With the growth of sales, Tau, a finalist in local Radio 702’s 2013 Small Business Awards, enlisted the help of five other women and they planted a vegetable garden to have a steady supply of vegetables needed for producing the sauces.
“So far we are doing well and making a profit,” Tau said. “Our mission statement is ‘We eat what we sow.’ This means that we only make and sell what we would eat ourselves.”
Tau hasn’t abandoned her dream of resurrecting her Chinese restaurant and sees her sauce business as preparing for that eventuality.
Ever the entrepreneur, her next plan is to re-visit the concept of mobile kitchens and start a franchise operation fashioned after KFC and McDonald’s but serving Chinese food.
Each mobile kitchen will directly provide a job opportunity for one person, with a focus on young people, women and those with disabilities, trained by Tau. To date she has had a positive response from several government departments for funding.
Tau also wants to expand her vegetable garden to a farm, which would supply vegetables for the mobile kitchens and sauces.
When asked the inevitable question about why she likes Chinese food so much, her answer is always the same.
“It is so delicious, nutritious and prepared in a healthy way. I love it, my family loves it, my friends love it, my colleagues in school and neighbors love it.”
No doubt as her business flourishes once again there will be many, many more people in Johannesburg who will love it too. (Reporting from Kenya) |
