Business

The man who founded a R470 million kitchenware business from a living room

Kirsten Minnaar • 7 June 2026

Andrew Smith helped build Yuppiechef, one of South Africa’s most recognisable online retailers, from his living room in Cape Town.

After years of work, Smith and his co-founder, Shane Dryden, managed to turn a small website selling obscure kitchen tools into a business that was ultimately sold for around R470 million.

Before they founded Yuppiechef, the pair earned a living building websites and software for other businesses.

“We were selling our time by the hour, building websites and doing programming for other companies,” Smith explained in an interview on The Money Show.

Like many entrepreneurs, they dreamed of creating a product-based business rather than selling their time.

“We could put up a website and sell some products, and Yuppiechef wasn’t the first one of those. We actually started with bug-zapping rackets and country flags and various other things.”

The kitchenware business that eventually became Yuppiechef was simply the next idea they pursued – but it turned out to be the one that worked.

The inspiration came from cooking shows and international travel. Smith and Dryden noticed that many of the kitchen tools and brands featured overseas were difficult or impossible for South Africans to buy.

“When we started Yuppiechef back in 2006, we knew there were products that South Africans wanted for their kitchens that weren’t easily available to them,” Smith previously said.

During the early 2000s, online shopping was starting to take off, but it was still far from being mainstream in South Africa.

“If you knew where to buy something in a physical store, you would go and buy it. No one really trusted the internet. It was quite tricky to make payments, and delivery was slow,” Smith said.

Instead of competing on price, Yuppiechef focused on specialised products that customers could not easily find elsewhere.

This also pushed customers who were still wary of online shopping to use Yuppiechef, even if it meant that they had to wait a while to get their orders.

Founding an e-commerce giant

The business launched with just 32 products and was run from Smith’s lounge in Plumstead, Cape Town. Initially, sales were scarce. The first order came from Dryden’s father, followed by a few purchases from friends and family.

The breakthrough came a few months later when a customer named Denise, whom neither founder knew, placed an order. “I said to Shane, ‘Do you know Denise?’ And he said, ‘No, I don’t know Denise.'”

The sale prompted an idea that would become central to Yuppiechef’s identity – adding handwritten letters to the orders.

“This person has come along and trusted us,” Smith recalled. “The idea of just putting a product in a box and shipping it off – there has to be something more than that.”

“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.”

The handwritten notes became one of Yuppiechef’s defining features and continue to accompany orders today. “It’s such a focus of what this is – we are humans selling to other humans,” Smith said.

As the business grew, Yuppiechef combined this personal approach with an expanding range of products and an early embrace of social media.

“We would post pictures of our office or our team, and we could connect with customers without it being a polished 30-second clip that had gone through an advertising agency.”

The company’s growth accelerated over the following decade. It expanded beyond kitchenware into homeware, furniture and lifestyle products, while opening physical stores across South Africa.

The R470 million Mr Price deal

In 2021, after years of growth, Yuppiechef was acquired by Mr Price in a deal valued at around R470 million.

Smith said the decision was influenced by both long-term planning and the realities of running a fast-growing retail business. “It felt like we were playing double or quits over and over again as a small business.”

The company was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, and although the business recovered after the initial lockdowns as online shopping took off in South Africa, it became clear that they needed more stability.

Rather than simply changing shareholders, Smith viewed the transaction as a means of securing the company’s future. “The timing was right. Mr Price ended up being the right home for us.”

“It was the permanent home. It’s going to have a place that will live on beyond Shane and I. That’s what’s best for the brand and for the company that we had built.”

Smith and Dryden remained with the company for a year after the acquisition before leaving in 2022. However, their retirement did not last long.

On a camping trip shortly after their departure, they already began planning their next venture – an outdoor equipment retailer called Brave Hardy. “We are builders,” Smith said. “We will keep on going.”

Today, Brave Hardy stocks dozens of international outdoor brands and follows many of the same principles that helped make Yuppiechef successful.

“I thought embarking on this journey a second time might feel routine, but the thrill is as strong as ever,” Smith said.

“I find myself eagerly refreshing the dashboard, awaiting each new customer with the same anticipation as my very first online sale.”