Lisa Vanderpump may be opening a new restaurant - Page Six

Lisa Vanderpump could be expanding her West Hollywood restaurant empire, Page Six has learned.

An LA source told us of the “Vanderpump Rules” star: “Lisa’s hubby, Ken, was seen last week at 8755 Melrose near Robertson Boulevard. It’s around the corner from Sur. It looked like he was with a broker and an assistant. The vacant restaurant had a ‘leased’ sign on it a few days later,” the spy said.

In addition to Sur, Lisa and Ken also own LA eateries Pump and Villa Blanca, plus Tom Tom with co-stars Tom Sandoval and Tom Schwartz, and new Vanderpump Cocktail Garden in Vegas.

A pal said of the possible new space: “A new addition to their current holdings wouldn’t surprise me at all,” because Lisa and Ken are always on the hunt for the next “hot spot.”

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https://pagesix.com/2019/06/29/lisa-vanderpump-may-be-opening-a-new-restaurant/ 2019-06-29 19:37:00Z

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Key Tips For Launching A Successful Restaurant. - Forbes

Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

© 2019 Bloomberg Finance LP

For many people, opening a restaurant is a dream. One of the many things I find so interesting about the restaurant business is the blend of creative artistry and the detailed and challenging business aspects necessary to be successful. As an Adjunct Instructor at NYU's School of Professional Studies, I teach restaurant concept development and business planning. On several occasions, I have been asked by my students to summarize the top issues that one must consider when planning to open a restaurant. Generally, regardless of the type of restaurant, the planning and considerations are the same. I'll cover a few of the top line elements here.

At the beginning of the process, you should write a simple business plan. It would help if you thought about the many pieces of the puzzle connected to a successful outcome. Many novice restaurateurs, very often chefs, only consider the food component, but there is so much more. A well thought out business plan will include creating a unique concept, a competitive analysis, site selection, financial projections, equipment needs, staffing, and of course, the menu.

Let's start with a concept

It's essential that your restaurant offers a unique experience. It could be a Wine Bar with small plates, or a BBQ theme or a Create Your Plate concept. Whatever you decide, it is critical that the environment and "vibe" within the restaurant places the guest firmly inside the experience you're attempting to create. Don't confuse the guest with a concept that's disconnected. As I often remind my clients, "everything touches everything else." For instance, you wouldn't use elegant tableware in a fried chicken restaurant or disposable plates in an upscale steakhouse. As obvious as this may seem on the broader elements, it's essential to take that idea to every detail of the restaurant concept, no matter how small. Everything from the paint color to the music to the tabletops to the wall hanging must work together. The decor elements, the menu, and the service level need to provide the guests with a seamless experience that, when done well, goes almost unnoticed because it's natural and authentic.

If You Build It, Will They Come?

Building a clientele is never as easy as hanging a sign over the door. It takes smart planning, execution of marketing, and living up to the promise in your mission and brand position statement. You should never assume, "if you build it, they will come." Questions to ask yourself are; how will my restaurant connect with people? Why does my restaurant exist? What type of people am I looking to attract? What do they read or watch? How do they spend their spare time? What is the best way to reach them? Your concept should appeal to a particular, selected audience. There is no such thing as "everyone is my customer." Knowing why and for whom your restaurant exists is crucial to success. Your marketing plan should offer compelling reasons why that guest base should frequent your establishment regularly. Is the concept created for health-conscious people? Is it aimed at Millennials or Baby Boomers? It is a full menu or dessert brand or a convenient, fast food, value-based concept. Your social media, print ads, and community outreach should focus on one single audience with one single message. Once you've built a loyal base of customers and repeat business, then you should consider expanding your base by marketing to others in the area with a proposition that appeals to them.

Your People Plan is Key

A great team will help you win everyday. Hiring great people is the first step in delivering service excellence and a consistent product to your guests. Your mission statement "the why" along with a corporate culture that emphasizes respect for employees, commitment to your guests, service to the community, and concern for the environment will guide you when selecting your staff. It's not enough to hire people with restaurant experience; they should also understand and be excited about the mission of the restaurant. If not, they will go through the motions with an inauthentic approach and often fail at exceeding guest expectations. Examine your corporate core values and hire people that match it. Next, supply your staff with comprehensive, ongoing training and the proper tools so can they carry out the day to day tasks flawlessly. Hire for qualities, train for skills.

The Market and Competition

Understanding the market area where you'd like to open your restaurant is a crucial element to the plan. Carefully research the demographics to ensure there are enough people in the area that match whom you believe will embrace your concept. When looking for your location, work with an experienced commercial broker that can supply you with data to help you choose the area and the site correctly.

A full competitive analysis is also essential. For example, check the pricing of your competition. Be sure you're not over or underpriced for the market. Check other services they offer, such as delivery and online ordering. Spend time in the market area, dine several times at as many competitors as possible, and position your restaurant to address the missing needs in the market. Having a unique value and selling proposition will keep you ahead of the game. Remember, everyone is vying for the same consumer dollars, so you need to create points of differentiation that will help your establishment stand out from the competition.

Consistently Great Food

Your menu must not only be relevant to the concept and the market but should be prepared and served perfectly every time. Restaurant guests expect dishes they grown to love to have the same flavor and high quality each time they visit. Inconsistent products can lead to disappointed guests, bad reviews, and slumping business. Your menu should be not only delicious but also simple to execute. The more straightforward the menu, the less chance of mistakes in preparation. Consistency increases guest satisfaction. Some chefs and "foodies" create menu items that are too complicated and require a highly skilled professional in the kitchen. This approach is fine if you intend to open a high-end restaurant staffed with high price personnel, but not in a fast-casual or family restaurant setting. A winning menu is simple, fresh, relevant, and great tasting. A competent chef can assist in developing dishes that are unique and great tasting that are also simple to produce with less skilled labor. If you have aspirations of owning more than one location, then simple execution, and consistent products are a must to achieve the goal of operating multiple restaurants.

Cash Is King

There are many reasons why restaurants fold. It could be the wrong concept, poor choice of location, not correctly researching the competition, poor service, an uninspiring menu, or bad food, to name a few. That said, the negative impact of undercapitalization may be the most frequent cause of restaurant failures. Knowing how much money you need to launch the restaurant is only the tip of the iceberg. You must assess ongoing cash needs while the restaurant is newly opened and gaining momentum. It may take many months for a restaurant to break even and then eventually become profitable. Being able to support the financial needs during this phase is often the "make or break" challenge that many new restaurateurs cannot overcome. A well thought out projection model that you create with the help of  a professional financial advisor can save you from the frustration, negative financial impact and heartbreak of a failed restaurant. Considering capital needs for the first twelve to fifteen months is not only prudent but essential to the success of any new restaurant. You must be prepared to cover the operational costs and expenses as the restaurant "ramps up." Carefully consider your cash needs and how much working capital you must have on hand, ready to deploy.

Have A Plan And Follow Your Dream

Owning a restaurant can be personally rewarding and profitable. Many people have built great restaurant companies following these simple guidelines. Desire and passion will only get you so far. Create your business plan as a road map. Your plan will help you stay on track when dealing with the many moving parts of launching and successfully operating a new restaurant.

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/garyocchiogrosso/2019/06/29/key-tips-for-launching-a-successful-restaurant/ 2019-06-29 16:57:27Z

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One of Mexico City’s Hottest Restaurant Groups Fuses Mexican and Japanese Influences - Fortune

Welcome! To bring you the best content on our sites and applications, Meredith partners with third party advertisers to serve digital ads, including personalized digital ads. Those advertisers use tracking technologies to collect information about your activity on our sites and applications and across the Internet and your other apps and devices.

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http://fortune.com/2019/06/29/mexico-city-cabo-restaurants-japanese/ 2019-06-29 13:30:56Z

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How a roaming restaurant critic landed in Los Angeles - Los Angeles Times

Do I miss the job of ceaselessly wandering the country — opining on the nation’s buzziest openings, blitzing through barbecue restaurants in North Carolina or Texas, surveying the 1980s-era Cantonese restaurants in Vancouver and Richmond, British Columbia? Honestly, after all that time on the road, I do not. Before one rare flight, part of my psyche freaked out like a devoted pet whose person has pulled out the suitcase and started packing. I mean, I made it to LAX, but basically I had to pat myself on the head and promise I’d be back home very, very soon.

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https://www.latimes.com/food/la-fo-critics-tasting-notes-newsletter-20190629-story.html 2019-06-29 13:00:00Z

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Boycott by Whites of South African Restaurant Reflects Growing Sense of Grievance - The New York Times

STRAND, South Africa — For many white children growing up in apartheid South Africa, the Spur Steak Ranches restaurant chain was a home away from home, offering kid-friendly meals and play areas with an American Wild West theme.

For their parents, the chain’s outposts served as the social center in many rural towns and in suburbs like Strand, a once-popular beach resort about 30 miles from Cape Town.

“A lot of people thought of Spur as their living room,” said Johan Pienaar, a brand consultant.

But some of Spur’s most ardent fans have been staying away, supporting a boycott now entering its third year that has highlighted the underlying racial tensions in South African society.

The former patrons speak in emotional terms of a betrayal by a cherished brand, whose outposts were effectively barred to blacks during apartheid because of their locations in whites-only areas.

“I’ll never set foot inside that place again,” said Keith van Eeden, who lives in Strand and was a loyal Spur customer for more than three decades, religiously taking his three children there on their birthdays.

“Spur is only for blacks now,” Mr. van Eeden added. “They don’t want the whites.”

The boycott began in 2017 when Spur sided with a black woman who was in a confrontation with a white man at a franchise in Johannesburg. But the continuing campaign against the chain — promoted by South Africa’s most prominent groups that advocate white-minority rights — reflects something more profound than lingering bitterness over that dispute.

It’s a demonstration of a strong, and what appears to be a growing, sense of resentment among many white South Africans a quarter of a century after they lost political power, and the outrages and brutalities of apartheid were ended.

In the May general elections to elect a new National Assembly, the party that enjoyed the biggest increase in its share of the vote was Freedom Front Plus — a small Afrikaner party fighting to repeal affirmative action policies for black South Africans. The party also opposes the African National Congress’s policy of expropriating white-owned land without compensation, which is not yet law.

In the fight that started the boycott, caught on videos that went viral, the two customers are seen arguing over the behavior of their children. The white man yanks the arm of a black boy, before threatening to hit the black woman and trying to overturn a table where her small children were sitting.

A few days later, Spur issued an apology to the woman and banned the man for his “aggressive manner” and “unacceptable” actions.

Conservative whites were outraged, with many saying both customers should have been banned. The boycott push took on momentum when white-minority lobbying groups got involved. One was AfriForum, which has drawn widespread criticism for its views, including its recent denial that apartheid was a crime against humanity.

Image

In May general elections, South Africans elected a new National Assembly. The party that had the biggest increase in its share of the vote was a small Afrikaner party fighting to repeal affirmative action policies for black residents.CreditJoao Silva/The New York Times

The Spur boycott resonated the most among white, working-class Afrikaners like Mr. van Eeden who, while living in a country where whites still disproportionately control the economy, feel resentful about having lost out in the democratic South Africa.

Mr. van Eeden, who runs a rubble removal service in Strand, a stronghold of Afrikaners, said that when apartheid ended, he “wasn’t very happy about it.”

He no longer believes that South Africa is a country for people like him. “If we had money,” he said, “we’d have got out.”

A restaurant chain’s banning of one man for aggressive behavior would hardly seem the sort of perceived grievance to give rise to an impassioned movement, especially in a country where a large majority suffered extreme injustices for decades.

And these complaints about white marginalization do lead to “an eye roll” among many black South Africans, said Wamuwi Mbao, a literary critic and lecturer at Stellenbosch University, who writes about race and identity.

But for many whites, the banning represented a larger symbolic loss. And the breadth and duration of this boycott, whose success caught many by surprise, showed just how many whites were committed to protesting their sense that a cultural touchstone had forsaken them.

Within six months of the boycott, Spur’s nationwide sales dropped by more than 9 percent. That overall dip concealed even deeper losses at the chain’s restaurants in predominantly white areas.

“Nobody in South Africa thought a boycott could be this effective,” said Johan Pienaar, a brand expert, who consulted with Spur on how to manage the protest but no longer works on the chain’s behalf. Spur, he added, was “suddenly being boycotted by the very people they’ve been cultivating as customers for years.”

Arthur Peace, whose family owned two Spur franchises in the predominantly white suburbs north of Cape Town, said business was devastated by the boycott. He had to sell one of the restaurants.

“You go from being O.K. into the red zone within a month,” he said. Mr. Peace recalled regular customers telling him, “‘We love you guys, but we’re just not supporting the brand.’”

The scope and intensity of the boycott, Mr. Peace said, showed just how much anger there was in the nation.

Founded in 1967, Spur helped introduce American-style casual dining to South Africa at a time when the country’s racial policies were increasingly making it an international pariah. Franchises spread quickly, and the chain became one of the country’s most recognizable brands.

During apartheid, Spur did not have an official policy of segregation, said Moshe Apleni, a company spokesman.

Image

Arthur Peace, whose family owned two Spur franchises in the predominantly white suburbs north of Cape Town, including this one, said business was devastated by the boycott.CreditWikus De Wet for The New York Times

But black South Africans were effectively barred from Spur restaurants because they were located in cities and towns restricted to white citizens.

The company’s chief operating officer, Mark Farrelly, said in a radio interview at the height of the boycott in 2017 that the company was facing a “rabid right-wing backlash.” He pointed out that the hardest-hit franchises were located in former strongholds of the Conservative Party, the right-wing party that had opposed the end of apartheid.

In response, the leader of an influential white-minority trade union, Solidarity, wrote in an open letter: “This is about a community that feels estranged in the country. Now, they feel strange in their favorite restaurant as well.”

Since apartheid’s end, Spur, just like supermarkets, department stores and other businesses that once catered largely to white customers, has had to adapt to South Africa’s inexorably changing demographics.

Its white population, now around 8 percent, is shrinking; for all the country’s deeply rooted income inequality, the share of middle-class black consumers is growing.

Black South Africans now account for about 65 percent of the customers at the nation’s more than 280 Spur franchises, according to an internal report prepared for the company.

But individual franchises still depend heavily on white customers.

Sales have slowly recovered nationwide. But business is still not back to normal at some locations, including Mr. Peace’s remaining store, where he said eight families were staying away.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, the Spur franchise in Strand was half full, with equal numbers of whites, blacks and people of mixed race.

At one table near the play area, a group of young black children sat with their mothers. Waiters had just stomped and clapped through a birthday song.

Anelisa Nqevu had arranged the party for her daughter, who was turning 8. They lived in Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s largest township, some 11 miles away.

“Each time I go shopping, she wants me to take her to Spur,” Ms. Nqevu said, her daughter standing nearby.

Despite all the furor around the boycott, Ms. Nqevu said she didn’t feel any racial tension at the restaurant.

“Everyone is welcome there now — black or white,” she said.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/29/world/africa/south-africa-spur-boycott.html 2019-06-29 10:54:26Z

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Boycott by Whites of South African Restaurant Reflects Growing Sense of Grievance - The New York Times

STRAND, South Africa — For many white children growing up in apartheid South Africa, the Spur Steak Ranches restaurant chain was a home away from home, offering kid-friendly meals and play areas with an American Wild West theme.

For their parents, the chain’s outposts served as the social center in many rural towns and in suburbs like Strand, a once-popular beach resort about 30 miles from Cape Town.

“A lot of people thought of Spur as their living room,” said Johan Pienaar, a brand consultant.

But some of Spur’s most ardent fans have been staying away, supporting a boycott now entering its third year that has highlighted the underlying racial tensions in South African society.

The former patrons speak in emotional terms of a betrayal by a cherished brand, whose outposts were effectively barred to blacks during apartheid because of their locations in whites-only areas.

“I’ll never set foot inside that place again,” said Keith van Eeden, who lives in Strand and was a loyal Spur customer for more than three decades, religiously taking his three children there on their birthdays.

“Spur is only for blacks now,” Mr. van Eeden added. “They don’t want the whites.”

The boycott began in 2017 when Spur sided with a black woman who was in a confrontation with a white man at a franchise in Johannesburg. But the continuing campaign against the chain — promoted by South Africa’s most prominent groups that advocate white-minority rights — reflects something more profound than lingering bitterness over that dispute.

It’s a demonstration of a strong, and what appears to be a growing, sense of resentment among many white South Africans a quarter of a century after they lost political power, and the outrages and brutalities of apartheid were ended.

In the May general elections to elect a new National Assembly, the party that enjoyed the biggest increase in its share of the vote was Freedom Front Plus — a small Afrikaner party fighting to repeal affirmative action policies for black South Africans. The party also opposes the African National Congress’s policy of expropriating white-owned land without compensation, which is not yet law.

In the fight that started the boycott, caught on videos that went viral, the two customers are seen arguing over the behavior of their children. The white man yanks the arm of a black boy, before threatening to hit the black woman and trying to overturn a table where her small children were sitting.

A few days later, Spur issued an apology to the woman and banned the man for his “aggressive manner” and “unacceptable” actions.

Conservative whites were outraged, with many saying both customers should have been banned. The boycott push took on momentum when white-minority lobbying groups got involved. One was AfriForum, which has drawn widespread criticism for its views, including its recent denial that apartheid was a crime against humanity.

Image

In May general elections, South Africans elected a new National Assembly. The party that had the biggest increase in its share of the vote was a small Afrikaner party fighting to repeal affirmative action policies for black residents.CreditJoao Silva/The New York Times

The Spur boycott resonated the most among white, working-class Afrikaners like Mr. van Eeden who, while living in a country where whites still disproportionately control the economy, feel resentful about having lost out in the democratic South Africa.

Mr. van Eeden, who runs a rubble removal service in Strand, a stronghold of Afrikaners, said that when apartheid ended, he “wasn’t very happy about it.”

He no longer believes that South Africa is a country for people like him. “If we had money,” he said, “we’d have got out.”

A restaurant chain’s banning of one man for aggressive behavior would hardly seem the sort of perceived grievance to give rise to an impassioned movement, especially in a country where a large majority suffered extreme injustices for decades.

And these complaints about white marginalization do lead to “an eye roll” among many black South Africans, said Wamuwi Mbao, a literary critic and lecturer at Stellenbosch University, who writes about race and identity.

But for many whites, the banning represented a larger symbolic loss. And the breadth and duration of this boycott, whose success caught many by surprise, showed just how many whites were committed to protesting their sense that a cultural touchstone had forsaken them.

Within six months of the boycott, Spur’s nationwide sales dropped by more than 9 percent. That overall dip concealed even deeper losses at the chain’s restaurants in predominantly white areas.

“Nobody in South Africa thought a boycott could be this effective,” said Johan Pienaar, a brand expert, who consulted with Spur on how to manage the protest but no longer works on the chain’s behalf. Spur, he added, was “suddenly being boycotted by the very people they’ve been cultivating as customers for years.”

Arthur Peace, whose family owned two Spur franchises in the predominantly white suburbs north of Cape Town, said business was devastated by the boycott. He had to sell one of the restaurants.

“You go from being O.K. into the red zone within a month,” he said. Mr. Peace recalled regular customers telling him, “‘We love you guys, but we’re just not supporting the brand.’”

The scope and intensity of the boycott, Mr. Peace said, showed just how much anger there was in the nation.

Founded in 1967, Spur helped introduce American-style casual dining to South Africa at a time when the country’s racial policies were increasingly making it an international pariah. Franchises spread quickly, and the chain became one of the country’s most recognizable brands.

During apartheid, Spur did not have an official policy of segregation, said Moshe Apleni, a company spokesman.

Image

Arthur Peace, whose family owned two Spur franchises in the predominantly white suburbs north of Cape Town, including this one, said business was devastated by the boycott.CreditWikus De Wet for The New York Times

But black South Africans were effectively barred from Spur restaurants because they were located in cities and towns restricted to white citizens.

The company’s chief operating officer, Mark Farrelly, said in a radio interview at the height of the boycott in 2017 that the company was facing a “rabid right-wing backlash.” He pointed out that the hardest-hit franchises were located in former strongholds of the Conservative Party, the right-wing party that had opposed the end of apartheid.

In response, the leader of an influential white-minority trade union, Solidarity, wrote in an open letter: “This is about a community that feels estranged in the country. Now, they feel strange in their favorite restaurant as well.”

Since apartheid’s end, Spur, just like supermarkets, department stores and other businesses that once catered largely to white customers, has had to adapt to South Africa’s inexorably changing demographics.

Its white population, now around 8 percent, is shrinking; for all the country’s deeply rooted income inequality, the share of middle-class black consumers is growing.

Black South Africans now account for about 65 percent of the customers at the nation’s more than 280 Spur franchises, according to an internal report prepared for the company.

But individual franchises still depend heavily on white customers.

Sales have slowly recovered nationwide. But business is still not back to normal at some locations, including Mr. Peace’s remaining store, where he said eight families were staying away.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, the Spur franchise in Strand was half full, with equal numbers of whites, blacks and people of mixed race.

At one table near the play area, a group of young black children sat with their mothers. Waiters had just stomped and clapped through a birthday song.

Anelisa Nqevu had arranged the party for her daughter, who was turning 8. They lived in Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s largest township, some 11 miles away.

“Each time I go shopping, she wants me to take her to Spur,” Ms. Nqevu said, her daughter standing nearby.

Despite all the furor around the boycott, Ms. Nqevu said she didn’t feel any racial tension at the restaurant.

“Everyone is welcome there now — black or white,” she said.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/29/world/africa/south-africa-spur-boycott.html 2019-06-29 10:37:48Z

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Boycott by Whites of South African Restaurant Reflects Growing Sense of Grievance - The New York Times

STRAND, South Africa — For many white children growing up in apartheid South Africa, the Spur Steak Ranches restaurant chain was a home away from home, offering kid-friendly meals and play areas with an American Wild West theme.

For their parents, the chain’s outposts served as the social center in many rural towns and in suburbs like Strand, a once-popular beach resort about 30 miles from Cape Town.

“A lot of people thought of Spur as their living room,” said Johan Pienaar, a brand consultant.

But some of Spur’s most ardent fans have been staying away, supporting a boycott now entering its third year that has highlighted the underlying racial tensions in South African society.

The former patrons speak in emotional terms of a betrayal by a cherished brand, whose outposts were effectively barred to blacks during apartheid because of their locations in whites-only areas.

“I’ll never set foot inside that place again,” said Keith van Eeden, who lives in Strand and was a loyal Spur customer for more than three decades, religiously taking his three children there on their birthdays.

“Spur is only for blacks now,” Mr. van Eeden added. “They don’t want the whites.”

The boycott began in 2017 when Spur sided with a black woman who was in a confrontation with a white man at a franchise in Johannesburg. But the continuing campaign against the chain — promoted by South Africa’s most prominent groups that advocate white-minority rights — reflects something more profound than lingering bitterness over that dispute.

It’s a demonstration of a strong, and what appears to be a growing, sense of resentment among many white South Africans a quarter of a century after they lost political power, and the outrages and brutalities of apartheid were ended.

In the May general elections to elect a new National Assembly, the party that enjoyed the biggest increase in its share of the vote was Freedom Front Plus — a small Afrikaner party fighting to repeal affirmative action policies for black South Africans. The party also opposes the African National Congress’s policy of expropriating white-owned land without compensation, which is not yet law.

In the fight that started the boycott, caught on videos that went viral, the two customers are seen arguing over the behavior of their children. The white man yanks the arm of a black boy, before threatening to hit the black woman and trying to overturn a table where her small children were sitting.

A few days later, Spur issued an apology to the woman and banned the man for his “aggressive manner” and “unacceptable” actions.

Conservative whites were outraged, with many saying both customers should have been banned. The boycott push took on momentum when white-minority lobbying groups got involved. One was AfriForum, which has drawn widespread criticism for its views, including its recent denial that apartheid was a crime against humanity.

Image

In May general elections, South Africans elected a new National Assembly. The party that had the biggest increase in its share of the vote was a small Afrikaner party fighting to repeal affirmative action policies for black residents.CreditJoao Silva/The New York Times

The Spur boycott resonated the most among white, working-class Afrikaners like Mr. van Eeden who, while living in a country where whites still disproportionately control the economy, feel resentful about having lost out in the democratic South Africa.

Mr. van Eeden, who runs a rubble removal service in Strand, a stronghold of Afrikaners, said that when apartheid ended, he “wasn’t very happy about it.”

He no longer believes that South Africa is a country for people like him. “If we had money,” he said, “we’d have got out.”

A restaurant chain’s banning of one man for aggressive behavior would hardly seem the sort of perceived grievance to give rise to an impassioned movement, especially in a country where a large majority suffered extreme injustices for decades.

And these complaints about white marginalization do lead to “an eye roll” among many black South Africans, said Wamuwi Mbao, a literary critic and lecturer at Stellenbosch University, who writes about race and identity.

But for many whites, the banning represented a larger symbolic loss. And the breadth and duration of this boycott, whose success caught many by surprise, showed just how many whites were committed to protesting their sense that a cultural touchstone had forsaken them.

Within six months of the boycott, Spur’s nationwide sales dropped by more than 9 percent. That overall dip concealed even deeper losses at the chain’s restaurants in predominantly white areas.

“Nobody in South Africa thought a boycott could be this effective,” said Johan Pienaar, a brand expert, who consulted with Spur on how to manage the protest but no longer works on the chain’s behalf. Spur, he added, was “suddenly being boycotted by the very people they’ve been cultivating as customers for years.”

Arthur Peace, whose family owned two Spur franchises in the predominantly white suburbs north of Cape Town, said business was devastated by the boycott. He had to sell one of the restaurants.

“You go from being O.K. into the red zone within a month,” he said. Mr. Peace recalled regular customers telling him, “‘We love you guys, but we’re just not supporting the brand.’”

The scope and intensity of the boycott, Mr. Peace said, showed just how much anger there was in the nation.

Founded in 1967, Spur helped introduce American-style casual dining to South Africa at a time when the country’s racial policies were increasingly making it an international pariah. Franchises spread quickly, and the chain became one of the country’s most recognizable brands.

During apartheid, Spur did not have an official policy of segregation, said Moshe Apleni, a company spokesman.

Image

Arthur Peace, whose family owned two Spur franchises in the predominantly white suburbs north of Cape Town, including this one, said business was devastated by the boycott.CreditWikus De Wet for The New York Times

But black South Africans were effectively barred from Spur restaurants because they were located in cities and towns restricted to white citizens.

The company’s chief operating officer, Mark Farrelly, said in a radio interview at the height of the boycott in 2017 that the company was facing a “rabid right-wing backlash.” He pointed out that the hardest-hit franchises were located in former strongholds of the Conservative Party, the right-wing party that had opposed the end of apartheid.

In response, the leader of an influential white-minority trade union, Solidarity, wrote in an open letter: “This is about a community that feels estranged in the country. Now, they feel strange in their favorite restaurant as well.”

Since apartheid’s end, Spur, just like supermarkets, department stores and other businesses that once catered largely to white customers, has had to adapt to South Africa’s inexorably changing demographics.

Its white population, now around 8 percent, is shrinking; for all the country’s deeply rooted income inequality, the share of middle-class black consumers is growing.

Black South Africans now account for about 65 percent of the customers at the nation’s more than 280 Spur franchises, according to an internal report prepared for the company.

But individual franchises still depend heavily on white customers.

Sales have slowly recovered nationwide. But business is still not back to normal at some locations, including Mr. Peace’s remaining store, where he said eight families were staying away.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, the Spur franchise in Strand was half full, with equal numbers of whites, blacks and people of mixed race.

At one table near the play area, a group of young black children sat with their mothers. Waiters had just stomped and clapped through a birthday song.

Anelisa Nqevu had arranged the party for her daughter, who was turning 8. They lived in Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s largest township, some 11 miles away.

“Each time I go shopping, she wants me to take her to Spur,” Ms. Nqevu said, her daughter standing nearby.

Despite all the furor around the boycott, Ms. Nqevu said she didn’t feel any racial tension at the restaurant.

“Everyone is welcome there now — black or white,” she said.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/29/world/africa/south-africa-spur-boycott.html 2019-06-29 10:30:06Z

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