{"id":652746,"date":"2026-06-09T16:05:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T14:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=652746"},"modified":"2026-06-09T16:10:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T14:10:46","slug":"an-e-commerce-business-that-started-as-a-part-time-project-was-sold-for-r470-million-and-is-now-opening-new-stores-accross-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business\/652746-an-e-commerce-business-that-started-as-a-part-time-project-was-sold-for-r470-million-and-is-now-opening-new-stores-accross-south-africa.html","title":{"rendered":"An e-commerce business that started as a part-time project was sold for R470 million and is now opening new stores accross South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

E-commerce business Yuppiechef was started as a part-time project by South African developers Andrew Smith and Shane Dryden before being sold to Mr Price for around R470 million in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company has become one of Mr Price’s biggest brands, seeing yearly double-digit sales growth. It also now has 25 brick-and-mortar stores nationwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Smith and Shane Dryden were building websites and software for companies in South Africa from 1999 before founding Yuppiechef in 2006 as an experiment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The platform has grown into one of South Africa’s largest e-commerce retailers, winning several awards and successfully expanding into physical retail, even as the sector faced headwinds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview on The Money Show<\/a>, Smith said that Yuppiechef was initially crafted as an e-commerce kitchenware business before branching out into homeware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was one of many ideas the founders had after spending years working for other companies in South Africa to develop their online businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We actually started with bug-zapping rackets and country flags and various other things,” he said. What would become Yuppiechef was just another product experiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pair observed a gap in the South African market between products available internationally and locally, but not in the shops everyone was visiting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Could we use online, use e-commerce to offer products that weren’t as easily available and sell them to customers,” said Smith in an interview with HeavyChef<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He attributed Yuppiechef’s early success to selling kitchenware and speciality products people wanted but couldn’t necessarily get elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We chose brands and products that, if you wanted, you wouldn’t know where to get it and so you would search for it online.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The platform’s early focus on products aided its business, as customers who didn’t know what Yuppiechef was would recognise products they wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith and Dryden used their experience as developers, with Dryden’s design background and Smith’s software background, to build the first version of Yuppiechef themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But it took a really long time,” said Smith, who added that the pair built Yuppiechef into a site that they would want to use themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What information would we want on the product page? Trying to put ourselves in the shoes of a customer.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early challenges and doing something different<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Shane Dryden and Andrew Smith, co-founders of Yuppiechef<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yuppiechef launched online with just 32 products and was run from Smith’s lounge in Plumstead, Cape Town. The website faced challenges early on due to low customer uptake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Business was slow soon after launching, before the pair decided to introduce a way to personalise each sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A customer called “Denise” placed an order, which neither of the founders recognised, following months of sales to friends and family members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith and Dryden decided to include a handwritten letter in their order to Denise. An off-the-cuff idea that would become a major piece of the company’s branding going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The idea of just putting a product in a box and shipping it off \u2014 there has to be something more than that,” said Smith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If I write something and I sign it from Andrew, the person knows there’s a human. If something goes wrong, I can come back to the human.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith urged other e-commerce entrepreneurs finding their way in the competitive market to do something unique in their businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Handwritten letters to customers are still a feature of Yuppiechef. By 2019, the team at Yuppiechef had written over 1 million thank-you cards for every single order that left its warehouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“E-commerce is not easy. It’s incredibly hard. There are a couple of things that make e-commerce challenging,” said Smith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Firstly, a lot of retail exists with what I call a geographic monopoly. The second part that makes e-commerce challenging is that it’s not a very mature industry yet in South Africa.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yuppiechef was sold to Mr Price in a deal valued between R470 million and R500 million. Smith said that the sale was driven by feelings of instability, especially after a tough period during the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith and Dryden remained at Yuppiechef until 2022, a year after the acquisition, before finally departing the company they had built from scratch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pair are already involved in their next e-commerce platform, an online store for outdoor and camping equipment called Brave Hardy, which delivers anywhere in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

More photos of Yuppiechef and its founders<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Developers Andrew Smith and Shane Dryden started e-commerce platform Yuppiechef as a part-time experiment. In 2021, it was sold to Mr Price for an estimated R470 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341213,"featured_media":652771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[64505,13803,11165,68976,78296,105771,105770,17098],"class_list":["post-652746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-andrew-smith","tag-developers","tag-e-commerce","tag-mr-price-group","tag-shane-dryden","tag-south-african-companies","tag-web-developers","tag-yuppiechef"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652746"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652746"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":653002,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652746\/revisions\/653002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}