The man whose first business was killed by Eskom and then started a coffee shop giant in South Africa

Stephan Bredell’s first business was an energy startup that was abruptly ended by an Eskom policy change. Now, he runs one of the fastest-growing coffee chains in South Africa.

Bredell co-founded Platō Coffee with his brother Petrus in December 2019, which has since grown to encompass 150 stores across South Africa.

Before that, however, Bredell tried his hand at a multitude of different business ventures, with perhaps the most important of these being a green energy consulting firm, Liteswitch.

Bredell founded Liteswitch in early 2012 as a way to provide companies with various products and services that would help them reduce their overall electricity usage.

This was intended to assist other businesses in benefitting from efficient energy rebates under Eskom’s integrated demand management (IDM) programme, launched a year prior.

During its short-lived tenure, Liteswitch managed to secure contracts with major customers, including ArcelorMittal, Toyota, Renault, Caxton, and UTI.

As managing director, Bredell was involved in all aspects of operations, including sales, finance, standards compliance, social media, marketing, graphic design, and even the company’s website.

The success of Liteswitch inspired Bredell to found his own lighting brand, spending R4 million on an initial order of lights from China, which he planned to bring to South Africa and rebrand.

“We did about 150 projects in two years,” Bredell said in an interview with 702. “It really went well. Then I flew to China to get energy-efficient lightbulbs and heat pumps.”

“As it was on the ocean on its way to South Africa, Eskom gave us a two-week notice to say the rebate programme was done. It was over with.”

Eskom put a hold on all of its IDM programmes in October 2013, as the rebates had led to a significant decline in its electricity revenue.

This is because Eskom had unintentionally incentivised its own customers to buy and use its electricity less by paying out these efficient energy rebates.

As a result, Liteswitch was forced to close its doors in January 2015, something which Bredell described as his “first big bloody nose in business”.

This experience reinforced in him a commitment to keep his next business idea simple, rather than structuring it around a corporate policy which he had no real control over.

Turning past failures into future success

Following the closure of Liteswitch, Bredell landed a position at King Price Insurance as an ideator, where he was tasked with creating new ideas and finding solutions to problems.

When King Price proposed opening a canteen on the fourth floor of its office building in Waterkloof Glen, Bredell pitched the idea of opening a cafe instead.

Bredell was put in charge of managing the new eatery, dubbed the Moonshot Cafe, with its quick success opening his eyes to a potential business opportunity.

Bredell saw the potential for high margins in the coffee industry, drawing on his previous business experience to keep things simple by eliminating high overhead costs and a bloated staff.

Instead, he opted to focus more on the high-profit, low-waste aspects of the coffee itself, eschewing common sit-down cafe practices such as serving food and hiring waiters.

“I went to my brother Petrus, and I pitched it to him,” Bredell explained. “I said, ‘Here’s the idea: let’s just do very small coffee shops and take coffee to the people in communities’.”

Bredell suggested opening 100 shops and splitting the business 50/50. His brother agreed, and from there the business took off.

“The dream was always to open 100 shops, but it’s very surreal looking back now that we’ve got 150 shops,” Bredell said.

Platō opened its first store on 7 December 2019, inside a container located at the Concentration Camp Memorial Site in the Irene Security Village in Centurion.

Despite facing significant challenges towards the start of operations, such as frequent load-shedding and the Covid-19 pandemic, the coffee shop’s simplistic business model soon paid off.

Throughout the course of 2026, Platō expects to open a further 70 to 80 stores, and it even launched its first store in the United Kingdom in April.

Bredell directly attributes Platō’s success to the many business lessons he learned from years of failing and trying again, beginning with his experience at Liteswitch.

“When my first business collapsed, I was 25 years old, married for a month, and basically came back from my honeymoon jobless,” Bredell said. “At the time, it felt like everything was falling apart.”

“Looking back now, it became one of the most important building blocks. No failure is ever wasted. It shapes how you think, how you build, and how you lead.”