It’s a round piece of dough; it’s got toppings on it. And it’s the world’s most popular convenience food order. Nobody can get enough pizza, whether it’s a specialist pizza aficionado standalone or a large chain, there’s literally a pizza for every taste and preference. And then some. It’s estimated that global pizza sales top five billion annually, and it keeps growing.
Pizza Chef founder Dino Nathanael said that pizza just has that certain something. And that certain something has been part of his life since childhood.
“I grew up in restaurants,” he said. “Food was always part of our lives.” He shared that it all started in Cyprus in 1998, where his family opened a takeaway pizza shop called Bacini’s, next door to a Blockbuster video store. Nathanael was five years old at the time. “Friday nights were simple,” he said. “People ordered pizza, picked up a DVD, went home and watched TV.”
A pizza and a DVD
The family returned to South Africa in 2002, and while school followed, restaurants never really left his orbit. By 2008, the family was back in the food business, launching a fish and chips operation that later became Fish & Chips Co, built on a franchise model and sold in 2012. From there came Chisanyama, which ran from 2012 to 2018, alongside a mix of other brands that sold burgers, chicken, ribs and sit-down formats. “It was a bit of everything,” Nathanael said. “Takeaway, sit-down, franchise. You learn fast what works and what doesn’t.”
Just before the pandemic smashed the world, Nathanael launched an online butchery, My Braai, designed as a digital-first business. That was his first foray into foodie-entrepreneurship. The timing proved super good. “The day lockdown started was my busiest day,” he said. Orders jumped from around 20 to 30 a day to 82 overnight. The business traded through lockdown and he eventually sold it. Then, soon after, Nathanael got married to the love of his life and his relationship with pizza re-sparked shortly after.
His first shop was a closed pizzeria close to his house, attached to a garage, which had traded for more than three decades before its owner fell ill and passed away. “I asked the BP owner if I could take it over,” Nathanael said. “He didn’t charge me rent or electricity to start. All I had to do was buy stock and then I started trading.”
A customer tasted his pizza, liked it, and mentioned he had recently been retrenched and wanted to invest his package into something that would deliver a return. He became Pizza Chef’s first franchisee. “That’s when I decided to franchise the brand,” Nathanael said. “I grew up around franchising. I understood the model.”
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Today, Pizza Chef operates ten stores. Growth, Nathanael said, is intentional rather than aggressive. “I would rather have 30 good stores than 100 poor-performing ones,” he said. “And I still want to be hands-on. I still want relationships with the owners.” Nathanael spends much of his week driving between stores, speaking to staff, listening to customers and testing ideas. “That’s where you hear what people are actually asking for,” he said. “You can’t just say times are tough and people are not spending money. People always need to eat. You must give them something they want.”
Yet it is a crowded pizza market and Nathaneal said that to separate yourself from the pack, you have to be really good at what you do. And he reckons the point of difference starts with wood-fired ovens, something he said is not that common in the takeaway franchise sector.
“You can really taste the difference., he said. It’s also about the basics. “Dough is key,” he said. “Salt levels matter. Sauce, mozzarella, quality ingredients. Then how it’s prepared and cooked.”
Pizza is about the basics
Running restaurants comes with long hours and personal trade-offs. Nathanael grew up watching his father work through the night. Now, with two young children of his own, he understands the cost.
“If you enjoy what you’re doing, you accept it,” he said. “You’d rather have a good headache than a bad one.” Away from work, he turns to sport to reset. Soccer, golf, cricket, tennis and padel fill whatever time he can find. “Anything sport,” he said.
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