"The South African Shoe Dog"
Notes on Handwritten – The founding story of Yuppiechef
There’s a beautiful anecdote in Andrew Smith’s book Handwritten. The nine-year-old cousin of Paul Galatis, Yuppiechef’s director and shareholder, once asked him, “Can we go to Yuppiechef to see the other side of the internet?”
I first listened to Andrew Smith speak in 2008 at a Heavychef event in Green Point. I was midway through my studies in entrepreneurship at the University of Cape Town, and Heavychef’s Fred Roed introduced himself to the audience with the story I’ve heard him repeat dozens of times culminating in the punchline, “Never trust a skinny chef.” Fred makes the point that entrepreneurship is about action and this is what his platform is all about. Yuppiechef had been operating for less than two years at the time and Andrew was already telling a story that was both inspired and scrappy in equal measure.
That same year, I started to get a sense of where my life could be headed. I felt I had a curiosity and aptitude for entrepreneurship. I also remember our lecturer and programme convenor, Stuart Hendry, telling us the story about his friend who embarked on a career in law only to pivot at 40 to run an African overland travel company. “Don’t spend your life in the wrong jungle,” he warned us. He wanted to inspire us to have confidence in our ideas and abilities and to back ourselves despite the inherent uncertainty in the path. It’s hard to believe that I would both remember that story so vividly and then enrol in law school a couple of years later to follow the cautionary tale almost to the letter.
I met Andrew a year ago at John Bradshaw’s inaugural Non-Fiction Book Club event where he mentioned that he was writing a book about his entrepreneurial journey. John interviewed Andrew that night about the seminal book that impacted Andrew’s career (Ricardo Semler’s Maverick) and Andrew shared how Maverick gave him permission to see business as something intrinsically worthwhile, a vehicle for meaning and an end in itself.
“I think this might be the best business book I have ever read.”
– John Bradshaw, Non-Fiction Book Club
John, with the same speed I remember witnessing on the wing for UCT in the early 2000s, crossed the line two weeks ago with the first review of Handwritten on his ‘editor’s copy’ opening with simply: “I think this might be the best business book I have ever read.” I immediately got the feeling that I sometimes get at a bookshop that buying this book is the deal of a century providing an outsized return on my investment. I wasn’t wrong.
Last Monday, I drove out to Westlake to collect my copy of Handwritten from Andrew. The chapters are short and punchy which means you never feel like you are stuck in a chapter that you can’t get out of. You go to bed thinking you’ll read one or two chapters but end up reading loads more than that, which is how I demolished it in a few days, finishing up at 02h00 on a school night with tears in my eyes.
Handwritten made me think about Akio Morita and the founding story of Sony. When Morita started Sony in a burned out factory just after World War II, they would write “Made in Japan” as small as they were legally required to. That was because, at the time, they were ashamed of the perception of Japanese products (cheap, copycat products). Not only did Sony build a reputation for quality products of its own, part of its mission was to raise the perception of Japanese products worldwide.
In my mind, one of Yuppiechef’s greatest achievements is what it has done in raising not just the level of customer service, care and thoughtfulness, but also the South African public’s expectations. Caring about what you do has a ripple effect that goes beyond your own business, and I’m not sure I had seen that level of craft and care taken in a South African business before Yuppiechef.
“We come from a century of bottom-of-the-barrel customer service, and where you treat people well, they take notice. People go online to shop, and think there’s this machine that will spit something out, which makes them worry about what they’ll do if things go wrong. At Yuppiechef, we’re all about people. Competitors can copy a lot of things, but it is incredibly difficult to copy culture.”
— Paul Galatis, Yuppiechef, 2011.
Something I shared with Andrew was that I’m not sure that Jules and I would be doing what we do, and possibly not in the way that we’ve been trying to do it, had we not seen companies like his raising the bar. I also told him that sometimes I feel like we’re acting like therapists treating our customers like patients dealing with PTSD from some of the sloppier players in the industry. He didn’t disagree.
What has changed for me over these years is that I moved from being on the consumer side of the internet, to the ‘other side’ as Paul’s cousin suggests, selling a product and also sharing my thoughts here on Substack. A heavier chef, some might say. But also a happier one. Alongside Jules, I now find myself in a jungle that feels much more like my own, building, and caring about something that makes people’s lives better.
Andrew should be incredibly proud of what he accomplished with this book. But as he shared with us last night, “I’m more proud of my teaming with Shane than anything we achieved together.” Which beautifully sums up the secret ingredient behind their success. From the outside many people will remember their triumphant sale to Mr Price. But the real magic of the story is relational: how two people started from nothing and learnt how to build together, play to each other’s strengths and keep going amidst loads of uncertainty.
Fred spoke about a walk he took with Andrew after the sale to Mr Price was announced in 2021. Andrew said, “The truth? The past few years have been a rollercoaster. Each year has felt like double-or-quits for us.” The growth the business experienced was exciting, but every year their growth and ambition were matched with the risk that it may all end up going to zero. In 2020, just a year before their big exit, Covid-19 left them unable to trade whilst invoices started stacking up to the point that it nearly ended the dream.
Last night, Fred described Handwritten as “The South African Shoe Dog”, referencing Phil Knight’s book about Nike’s harrowing founding story. In my mind, Handwritten sits alongside the very best in its genre. It is beautifully written yet provides a boatload of tactical and strategic insights. I would strongly recommend it for anyone interested in business, or who remembers getting a handwritten note from a stranger inside their Yuppiechef purchase.
The two remaining Cape Town launches this week are sold out, but you can buy the book and see more information about future events HERE, including the Johannesburg launch on Tuesday, 23 June 2026.