Online retailer Yuppiechef looks to bricks and mortar
Award-winning online company finds it also needs a storefront
Yuppiechef has four stores and is looking for more sites, with founder Andrew Smith espousing the value of bricks-and-mortar stores alongside e-commerce. It's a telling stance from a company that won the award for SA's top e-commerce company for six consecutive years and has been a frontrunner in online retail in the country. "The No1 reason we opened stores is we want to keep growing," said Smith, who was addressing a retail and consumer insight conference at the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg this week. "Growth online is slow and hard." It took two years for Yuppiechef to generate its first R1m in turnover as an online company, whereas it took only a few days to reach that at its V&A Waterfront store in Cape Town. Smith said shoppers in SA preferred to visit physical stores, and the country had one of the highest malls per capita in the world. The company has four stores in Cape Town and is looking at sites in Johannesburg. Though malls are being abandoned at...
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