10 Things You Need To Know About Yuppiechef And Its Founders!
10 Things You Need To Know About Yuppiechef And Its Founders! Mr Price announced recently that it had acquired a 100% of home ware company Yuppiechef. Mr Price reportedly bought the company for R460 million which will make its founders very happy because they stuck with the business while it was not picking up.
Here are 10 things you need to know about the company and its founders!
Yuppiechef was founded in 2006 by two good friends, Andrew Smith and Shane Dryden, selling just 32 kitchen products online, from a lounge in Plumstead. More than a decade (and more than a million cards and fridge magnets) later, it has nearly 200 employees that are now working together to help its customers find more moments of joy in their homes.
A US hedge fund, Tiger Global Management, owns a minority stake in the online retailer, but the main beneficiaries of the deal with Mr Price are thought to be the company’s directors.
Smith matriculated from Hilton College in 1998, receiving the school’s highest academic marks in his year.
After moving to Cape Town, he became friends with Dryden, and they later started a web development agency together called LiveAlchemy.
They did all of the site development themselves, after-hour. It took a long time for the site to gain traction – in their first four months; they only made 11 sales (ten of the sales were to friends or family). After a year, they only had 200 customers.
They continued to package all products from Smith’s lounge in Plumstead for a number of years, until they opened a warehouse in Westlake in Cape Town. It took five years before they were able to get a salary from Yuppiechef, Financial Mail reported.
With Smith, Dryden started a new company called Edison Stone five years ago. It distributes branded products – like Wüsthof and OXO – as well as Yuppiechef’s own brands, like Jimmy Public and Humble & Mash brand, in the wholesale market.
Yuppiechef’s stores are spread between Cape Town and Johannesburg, the seven stores stock a range of its most admired brands, customer favourites and its personal must-have items.
The stores have free wifi and also computers for customers and a staff member to look up products and information. Customers can also scan product QR codes on their mobile phone to instantly look up product information and customer reviews online.
Yuppiechef has also managed to win awards such as the SA National Business Awards: Digital Company of the Year Award (Winner) — 2019, SACSC Retail Design & Development Awards: Best Independent Retailer Store Design (Winner) — 2019, South African Online Retailer of The Year Awards: Winner — 2018 and South African Tech & E-Commerce Awards: Best Employer (Winner) — 2017.
