| Nomzamo Butchery |
Vision
There
is no space in the centre of Cape Town's CBD where it is possible to
sit outside, in a public space, and eat a freshly cooked, uniquely Cape
Town meal. While snoek is a fish unique to our waters, and wildly
popular throughout the Cape Flats, it is completely absent from
mainstream culture of the city centre. This is part of a crisis of
local culture in Cape Town, it is not present at street level except in
the townships.
We had envisaged Church Square with a daily foodmarket, a variety of
vendors offering a cross-section of indigenous Cape Town foods. This
would have had job creation and empowerment implications, in addition
to simply making great food available for residents on a lovely public
space.
The starting point was a foodmarket for the Goemarati shows. When it
worked, this really worked. Partly due to inconsistent audiences we
were unable to effectively grow the foodmarket as without sizeable
attendance it was not viable for the vendors.
The vendors
Our key vendors were Nomzamo Butchery, from Langa, and Cafe Wafa, from
Adderley Street. Nomzamo is a chisa' nyama, a butchery and braai venue,
in Langa, run by Vicki and Nam Mangalisa. They saw this as an
opportunity to expand their brand and to test possibilities in the city
centre.
For Cafe Wafa, Goemarati was a lovely extra revenue stream. Based
one block behind Church Square, it was easy for them to bring food
across and to refresh supplies, with minimum logistical problems.
Minimum purchases
The arrangement with the vendors was that the production guarenteed a
minumum number of meals. We needed to feed the musicians, technical
crews and production staff. Generally this meant about 30 meals per
show, for a minimum turnover of R600 for the vendor.
The problems
1. Health and hygiene laws in the Cape Town CBD to not allow for food
to be cooked on site. It must be prepared offsite, in a venue that has
been certified as suitable for such purposes and meeting all
regulations, brought to the site and re-heated using gas. This
posed a massive challenge: we had envisaged the foodmarket as an
opportunity for mainly Cape Flats operators who needed to reach
inner-city markets. But the level of infrastructure that they would
need to be able to participate was too high. Transport, large scale
catering equipment, gas canisters and bay-marines - under the current
bylaws, to be able to cater anything other than boerewords rolls in
town means you have to be a professional caterer. What we had
envisaged is a mid-way step to markets for those who wished to become
fully professional was actually something that only the professionals,
who didn't really need it, could access.
2. Reliability. As our key
provider, Nomzamo was unreliable. The food was always good, but it was
never clear whether or not they would actually arrive. Given that the
square wasn't packed with 400 people a show, there was little space to
lineup three or four vendors. It wouldn't have been viable for them.
3. Cape Flats market. There
wasn't really one for a foodcourt. Of all the shows, the poorest food
sales, consistently, was the Cape Flats. With the exception of Manenberg
The successes
- The food served was delicious and people loved eating outside.
- the vendors always sold out on Church Square
- the Manenberg food market was a triumph, with four vendors selling out and taking home a smile and cash
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