was going on.”
Barbara says Georgie had to do everything, “and everyone knew he was a softie”. He cared about people, she says, and time and again a franchisee would come up with a sob story about why he or she couldn’t pay the franchise fees that month. Georgie would always say, “Pay me back when you can.” Some never did.
John also remembers his brother as being very generous. “My father used to say to him, ‘Georgie, if you give away your bum, you’ll have to shit out of your ribs.’ He was too soft, and he helped too many people.”
But one thing Georgie wasn’t lenient about was when the police came to intimidate his staff who didn’t have a dompas, the pass books black people had to carry outside of their designated residential areas during apartheid. If caught without one, people could be arrested. The police often waited until a Friday night, when an outlet was at its busiest, to come around with a police van and round people up. Georgie or George would routinely go and pay the bail of employees who were in police custody.
Lukas Sandawana, who “started out scrubbing floors at Seven Steer”, learned to speak Greek and is still a driver for Famous Brands almost 50 years later. He remembers that policemen avoided Georgie, because he had been a boxer and could still pack a punch if he needed to. “MaBogwene I used to call him, or lion, as he didn’t want to hear anything bad about his workers. He wanted to fight for people,” says Lukas.
Barbara remembers that John started to spend a lot of time at her and Georgie’s home after their marriage, since George found it difficult to understand his youngest son. “John’s father was a boxer and a businessman, and John was quite soft,” she says. When John started making friends in more liberal hippy circles, the rift between George and John grew.
Meanwhile a new challenge was waiting. Less than a month after Georgie’s wedding, the plans that Seven Steer waiters Allen Ambor and Max Rivkind had started making some years before, were about to bear fruit.
CHAPTER 4
Spurred on
In an interview in October 2005, financial journalist Bruce Whitfield asked the executive chairman of Spur Corporation, Allen Ambor, where the idea for Spur as a Western-themed steakhouse came from.
It was a good question, as for years the Halamandres family has claimed that Spur was started with the know-how of George Halamandres, a fact Allen refutes strongly to this day.
Allen told Whitfield: “Well, there had been a couple of steakhouses in Johannesburg, where I grew up, that had that sort of feel about them. And I decided I wanted to go into that business and live in Cape Town where I had come on holiday. We came down here, but it took me a long time to find premises, two years; and another year and a half for them to be built.”
He said that a friend, Michael Hallier (who later became a renowned artist), designed the signs of the zodiac in batiks as part of the look and feel. “There were a lot of cattle in it as well, and bearing in mind we were Spur steak ranches that was appropriate,” Allen told Bruce.
When quizzed again about the Western theme, Allen answered: “It was just something that seemed right. Bearing in mind the niche that we chose was one of steaks and grills and barbeques.”
Max Rivkind, who was to become Allen’s partner, remembers the holiday that Allen referred to. “A couple of years after starting as waiters at Seven Steer, Arthur [Balaskas] met a Russian girl called Mina, and because she wanted to see her mother who was living in Cape Town, the four of us decided to go there on vacation.”
Max says they ate at many steakhouses, “but nothing was as clean and family-friendly as the Steers back home where Allen and I worked”. The idea arose that they would set up business in the Mother City. He says that he and Allen spoke to locals who knew the Halamandres steakhouses up north, and they agreed with the budding entrepreneurs that they could do well.
Allen says, however, that he got the idea for the steakhouse before that holiday, in 1962-’63 already, when he went to Cape Town on holiday with his first wife, Reina. He didn’t want to become a part owner of one of the restaurants in Johannesburg because “the [Halamandres] family was verkramp and controlling; they weren’t prepared to let outsiders in – they couldn’t see the bigger picture”.
He started looking at premises in 1963, and it was only in December of that year that he, Arthur, Mina and Max went on holiday, he says.
Once back in Johannesburg, recalls Max, he and Allen spoke to their friends Georgie and Arthur about plans to open a Steers in Cape Town. “The basis for opening was to sign a franchise agreement with them, but details weren’t discussed,” says Max.
The plan was that he and Allen would be 50/50 partners, but Allen says it never reached that point. Max initially dropped out of the venture and Allen only approached him 18 months later to become involved again.
“I did all the initial research,” says Allen.
It took him two years and several trips to Cape Town to find a potential location in Newlands. Only because he then badly needed a partner, did he involve Max again – late in 1965. Max only accepted in December 1966, says Allen, “after I had done all the set-up work alone for almost three years”.
Allen had R4 000 capital in hand, and Max says he equalled that. He had some savings from working in the Seven Steer and also took a loan of R2 000 from a close cousin, Philip Shulman. “Unfortunately my parents weren’t people of means and my father could lend me only R2 000 ,” says Max.
Allen got his franchise agreement from Arthur, as he was going to operate the franchise side of the business. Allen recalls that George got cold feet at that stage and discouraged him from signing the lease. “I was a 22-year-old going on 18 and [George] feared for me. But I had to do it, it was my dream and I had put two years into making it happen.” He adds that he had no other way of making a living.
He also maintains that he signed the lease on his own. “I took all the risk,” he says. But Max disagrees. “We signed a lease and a franchise agreement with Arthur and Georgie, but both parties were naïve in what they signed. There was no local franchisor infrastructure and the resources and raw materials were dissimilar,” he says.
Allen remembers that he was expecting a lot of help from the Halamandres family, and had an undertaking that nine people would come to Cape Town to help him open the business. But this never happened. Max explains: “The burden on Arthur and Georgie to deliver was heavy, and in all fairness they couldn’t deliver. Not because they didn’t want to, but because of logistics and manpower. They weren’t a franchisor in the true sense of the word. It was very early days still.”
“They never helped me when I was trying to find a suitable location,” says Allen. He says there was also nobody to help when the parts for the restaurant that had been built had to be assembled. “I don’t want to sound like a martyr, but we could have gone bankrupt if we weren’t so tenacious. I was the leader of the whole thing and we were floundering.”
Allen says he had to sort out the manufacturing of all the equipment, as well as the shop fittings and décor. “Where do you buy groceries when you go to a new city? Where do you find manufacturing companies?” Finding reliable supplies took a lot of research, as did finding specialised fridge-ducting and equipment manufacturers, he says.
One of the problems seems to have been that Allen and Max weren’t happy with the layout for the Newlands restaurant that Teddy Hollander had drawn up. “I had to redraw the plans myself, although I wasn’t a draughtsman,” says Allen. Michael Hallier designed the décor after Teddy had “ducked and dived about it”.
“But even though the design elements, art and logos were slightly different, the DNA was exactly that of the Steers. You would always know you were visiting the same group,” says Max. “And even though the franchise agreement states the franchisor must do all of that, Allen took it upon himself to help Michael.” He hints that control was always rather important to Allen.
Allen says the DNA was the same only up to a point, because the food items were different. “And