Natasha Sideris is on a short break in Cape Town when I chat with her over Zoom. “Break” being a relative term. She’s using the downtime to get healthy, “burning 500 calories in 45 minutes” and walking across half of the Atlantic Seaboard. She assures me she is actually taking a couple of days off at the fabulous Sterrekopje Farm in Franschhoek, where she will “absolutely” switch off her phone.
There’s something about this “downtime” that seems unconvincing – after all, she’s on a Zoom call with me. Also, what I know of the Tashas Group founder tells me otherwise.
In 2006, I spent an afternoon writing about the then new tashas in Bedfordview. It was the early days of the brand, and Sideris was ensuring that the cream-and-brown café-style interiors were styled to perfection for the photographer – while dashing into the kitchen, chivvying along the apron-clad waiters, and talking to customers. She’d been at her first store in Sandton’s now-imploded Athol Square earlier in the day, doing the same. In fact, if you’d frequented any tashas in the brand’s first decade or so you would have seen something similar.
It’s fair to say the tashas brand taught South Africans about cool café dining, but we’re not the only ones who’ve benefited from the “tashas vibe”.
Today, Sideris and her brother Savva (her co-founder and group development director) have a 56-strong team at the group HQ in Dubai, and 39 locations across South Africa, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and London. They’re not all tashas, though – the other outfits include the very Mediterranean-feeling Bungalo34, the Greek-inspired Avli, and the edgy Perlage bar in Abu Dhabi. The group is also set to open restaurants in Belgrade and Athens.
And there are plans for South Africa. Demand in the Cape means the brand is set to launch a high-end, Italian-style tashas (along with its first homeware store) in Sea Point, a French-inspired tashas Le Parc in Mouille Point, an Avli, and – what she’s most excited about – “our first Café by tashas in an old home … just off Kloof Street”. There’s also a Cavendish Mall store and, in Joburg, a Le Parc for The Polofields near Waterfall, Midrand and a tashas in Bassonia.
‘Work is life’
It’s easy to be bogged down by stories of our stagnating economy, but Sideris is far more upbeat than a jaded journalist. Eleven years later, there’s double-digit growth in the group’s first Dubai store – and the same in some local stores, 20 years on.
South Africans probably don’t realise the homegrown brand is so international, but it’s unsurprising to learn that Sideris, though largely based in Dubai, still keeps tabs on everything. “Nothing goes on the menu anywhere until I’ve tasted it,” she says. Her team asks when she’s going to stop checking every element of operations, from design to food, and her answer is: “When it’s not possible for me to check it.”
Her extreme commitment to the job is undoubtedly a huge part of the company’s success. Of a work-life balance she says: “When I was younger, I had this fight with work being the enemy of life, and the minute I realised that actually, it isn’t – and work is life, and it’s a blessing to be able to work, work with people, and do the things that you love – then your work almost becomes part of your daily life.”
That said, she does caution would-be restaurant owners. “If you want to be successful in business – really successful – it’s going to come with some sacrifice. You might not be able to have balance for the first year, second, third or fourth while you’re building your business. And that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. So, if you want this perfect utopia of work-life balance and you only want to work five days a week for eight hours a day, well, then maybe owning your own business is not for you.”
Sideris visibly lights up when she starts talking about staff development – how so many of her team, who started at the bottom of the restaurant gig chain, now head up parts of the business or have been “exported” to the group’s international operations.
Take Ellen Mangweni, who was part of Sideris’s very first team in Bedfordview. After years of working as a waitress, she moved to London to help open the Battersea branch, where she is now a senior manager. Precious Dube began as a sculler at Sideris’s first restaurant, Nino’s, before moving to Dubai as a waitress. Today, she leads the team at Galleria as the general manager of the first tashas in Dubai.
“There is nothing like South African hospitality,” Sideris says – well, actually, more like Southern African, because many of the staff who’ve made it big abroad are both South African and Zimbabwean.
Cutting the red tape
It’s an interesting segue into the dynamics of being a South African restaurant owner – especially when you have the international market as a reference. What could the government do to assist the industry?
The answer is unyielding. “Why does it take a year to get a liquor licence? There’s just so much red tape. Why must you kick all the Zimbabweans out?” She explains that in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, there are minimum quotas for how many locals you have to employ, and then you can recruit others too.
“Where is the proper training school for hospitality – so that people take hospitality seriously? And then, just the gas that costs so much, the electricity that’s gone up, the rising food costs. There’s a lot that the government could do.”
Still, South Africa is not nearly as bad as the UK, where they are “killing the restaurant industry”.
The case of tashas London is an interesting one. The business is performing very well, but Sideris says the group certainly won’t be expanding in the country “until we find a local UK partner who understands the market better than we do and who can help us scale in a way that’s not going to be painful”. You get a sense that the foray into the market has been tough, but I even get a bit teary when she mentions the response from South African and Dubai expats at the Battersea opening.
“I was cleaning toilets, and my brother was on the grill line, and I didn’t go to the toilet for 17 hours. I was running up and down. Brutal. The London opening was brutal,” she says – but adds: “People were coming to offer help. They were saying, ‘Tash, can we help you open in the morning? We know that the staff are a nightmare. What can we do for you? How can we get involved?’ It was amazing.”
She’s not sugar-coating reality, or any of her experiences, though her perspective is fascinating. I ask about her not-so-successful relationship with Famous Brands, which bought and then sold its controlling stake in the business in 2020.
“When I did my deal with Famous Brands, I was a restaurateur who knew nothing about corporate. I went to my first board meeting with an apron on. It was an amazing learning experience. I learnt a lot – corporate governance, admin, P&Ls [profit and loss statements] – all the things that I hate,” she says.
“I learnt that structure is pivotal in a business of our size and a business that’s growing. You need process. You need divisions, you need leaders, you need KPIs. But I also learnt that I don’t want to get so big that I lose the magic.”
There’s probably too much to distil from Sideris in an hour-long interview – which leads to the question: when is the book coming? She laughs and says she’s still percolating over that.
What she is seriously considering, I’m thrilled to hear, is introducing tramezzinis to the tashas menu. She highlights the golden combo of top hospitality, good food, great décor and excellent people as the key to success, but her thinking on that 90s-style sandwich also speaks volumes about her achievements: “I’m an old-fashioned girl, an old-school restaurateur. The stuff that brings nostalgia is the best type of food.”
Top image: Natasha Sideris. Picture: supplied.
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