John, can I interview you for my site?
Sure, I will just go do my hair.
Your hair looks fine.
Three questions for you, hello.
Hello.
Okay John, talk to me about your background. How you come to have opened a Tashas’ in Canal walk?
I have been involved in restaurants for many many years. I am actually not in restaurants anymore, I only work here once a week. We met Tasha about four or five years ago. We put our name down for a Cape Town store. This luckily came up about six months ago. We started building three months ago and here we are. We have been open for two weeks.
Fantastic. Natasha talks about studying an area and picking up the feel of a community when looking to open a restaurant. I think you guys have done this well in terms of your two menus?
Tasha and her team decided to go with the art deco feel. I think it was motivated, one by the area and two by the existing architecture in the centre. If you look at the beams, they are already quite art deco. She didn’t want to go against that and sort of designed around that. Her design team came and put together a wonderful art deco feel and menu.
Tashas’ brand places enormous emphasis on product, people and atmosphere. This philosophy is what makes the brand as successful as it is. Talk to me about customer service?
Customer service is totally focused on the culture of the business that you are in and I think that Tashas service has a culture of being proud of the brand.
The staff that are attracted to work for Tashas’, understand the pressure which they are going to be under. One because the brand is so strong and the expectations are so high and two because the reason it is so busy is because of the service level. So the truth is that when your culture is that strong you start attracting the right people. Natasha and her brother Savva have done a marvellous job of setting a high standard. So just being part of the brand puts you immediately in the space that service has to be something that is taken very seriously.