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Sep 27, 2007:
A black economic empowerment consortium, made of largely Eastern Cape entrepreneurs, is to open a Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) outlet at Mdantsane by November this year
The 385 sqm store, which will employ almost 80 people, largely from the area, wraps up the fifth and final stage of Novate Property Investments’ expansion at Laphumilanga Shopping Centre. The centre is now valued at R180 million.
The world’s leading fast food chicken brand KFC joins existing tenants which include the Universal Church, Hardware Warehouse, Furniture and Appliance Warehouse, Just on Cosmetics and Chippys.
This is the second KFC for Baobab Khulisani Restaurants which also owns the KFC in Port Alfred. The consortium consists of Stephen Dondolo, Lindiwe Zakumba, Shane Thoresson, Leatitia Skelton and Sue Shefer. Together Sue and Leatitia have over 17 years of KFC brand experience.
The new restaurant will sport KFC’s latest design, which has been under development for the past 18 months. This design was developed to ensure that KFC’s Finger Lickin Good food is served up in “an equally desirable environment”.
This flagship KFC restaurant in Mdantsane, will comprise of 103 seats, offer KFC’s full menu, be serviced by eight tills to ensure the restaurant meets KFC’s well-known speed of service standards and will trade from 07:00 to 21:00 each day. Each shift will be manned by approximately 32 employees to “ensure every customer is taken care of in a manner which made the Colonel’s hospitality world famous”.
Leatitia Skelton explained that they happened to find the site quite by chance.
“We were traveling from Port Alfred to the Mdantsane to look at another site. We asked Grant for directions who said we should look at Taxi City. We saw the opportunity immediately. This was backed up later by a feasibility study which confirmed our instinct.”
Skelton said she had been hugely impressed by the quality of potential candidates that had been interviewed for the posts.
“The people whom we appoint, many of which already have matric, a diploma or degree, will undergo further skills development. Our business offers exciting career prospects,” explained Sue Shefer who was involved with the brand for ten years, managing areas such as training, operations and human resources.
“The new Mdantsane store brings KFC one step closer to its vision of being not only the biggest fast food brand in the country but one of the biggest and best loved brands across all categories in South Africa,” ended Skelton.