Two men behind South Africa’s first ultra-luxury petrol station
Celebrity chef David Higgs and serial businessman Gary Kyriacou created high-end restaurants in South Africa, including Marble, Saint, and Zioux, and the country’s most luxurious petrol station, Pantry by Marble.
The partnership between Higgs and Marble was born out of a simple 30-minute conversation between two strangers.
Gary Kyriacou started his career in the family business, opening and operating several Spar Supermarkets as director of retail and commercial development.
Following his successes in the family business, Kyriacou moved on to other ventures, which included co-owning a printing company and co-founding the coffee establishment Lulu.
Over his 20-year career, he owned several other retail properties and was involved in the hospitality program for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
He also acquired shares in the South African division of the world’s largest real estate company, Century 21. It was through Century 21 that Kyriacou met David Higgs.
Higgs co-founded a catering company and won the Young Chef of South Africa title in 1993. He then became a member of the South African National Culinary Team.
Like Kyriacou, he had an entrepreneurial flare, establishing a cooking school and launching another catering company.
Higgs bought a house through Century 21, and his agent asked him if he would be open to chatting with his director, Kyriacou, who wanted to open a restaurant.
Having worked in the restaurant industry, Higgs had encountered several people who wanted to open restaurants, but many lacked a solid plan or the endurance needed for that kind of venture. Kyriacou was different.
“He opened his laptop, and he presented me with Marble. The name, the concept, the growth, the fire. Literally everything,” Higgs said on the Self Starters podcast.
“It was clear from the get-go that Gary knew exactly what he wanted.” Higgs agreed to the plan but insisted that Kyriacou had to be in with him.
“I’ve seen so many chefs, people that I’ve worked for, go into partnerships with people with a lot of money and then when the going gets tough, they just pull the plug on everything.”
After half an hour of talking, they each agreed, and Marble was born. “It was that simple.”
Marble Restaurant in Rosebank

South Africa mostly had franchises or restaurants that followed the same “copy-pasted” formula. The local restaurant industry was widely seen as a franchise-driven.
“We came along and said we want the front desk, we want the bar, we wanted open flames, we wanted everything,” Kyriacou said on Self Starters.
“So, we said, ‘Okay, well, let’s try it,’ and we disrupted the restaurant industry in South Africa.”
Their concept was an experiential restaurant with open-flame cooking and top-notch service. It was nothing like South Africa had seen before.
“Marble was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life,” Higgs said.
Even before opening, there were plenty of challenges. There were delays, people in the kitchen were getting burn marks learning to cook with open fire, and Marble had 3,000 bookings – far exceeding their expectations.
When everything didn’t come together in the first three days, they knew something had to change.
“We rethought the kitchens, the products, equipment, everything,” Higgs said. “We literally started again. But we knew we had a winning formula.”
It took them about six months to get their product right and for people to start understanding what Marble was all about. But from that point, its success snowballed.
By 2022, the number of hostesses at the front desk increased from one or two to around 14, who focused solely on answering phones and seating guests.
The restaurant was so successful that the group opened a second location at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town in December 2024.
Pantry by Marble

After Marble’s 2016 launch, Higgs and Kyriacou opened Saint in Sanston in 2018, which also became a tremendous success.
However, everything changed for them when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Lockdown hit restaurants particularly hard, and the two founders knew they needed to develop a new business concept resilient to such events.
One of their ideas was Zioux, their third restaurant, which focuses on fine Asian cuisine. This was very different from Marble and Saint.
They settled on an unexpected idea for their other business venture: a high-end petrol station forecourt.
“People might find it strange, but it was the next logical step for us. It was the obvious thing to do. We found ourselves very exposed during lockdown in the restaurant space,” Higgs said.
“We came up with four or five different concepts of what we could do if this happened again or this COVID thing doesn’t go away quickly. How do we restructure our business? And that’s sort of how it came about,” Higgs said.
“One of the most important things that we wanted to do was to bring the hospitality feel back into the grocer,” Higgs said.
Essentially, the concept was a luxury forecourt that offers wines, grab-and-go meals, local produce, good coffee and baked goods – all with the everyday convenience you would get from a garage.
Everything down to the music was carefully curated to ensure customers had an excellent experience.
On top of this, it is open 24 hours a day, and chefs and restaurant managers are in-store to help customers with their queries.
“You’re always nervous when you’re opening a new business,” Kyriacou explained. “You’re always second-guessing yourself.”
“If you don’t have those feelings of doubting yourself, then there’s something wrong. You have to push through that and create what you want to do.”
One major hurdle the pair faced when opening the Pantry was that they didn’t have a retail license for petrol sales yet, meaning they couldn’t make any petrol sales.
“We opened the first two months without selling one litre of petrol, so we opened the convenience shop before the petrol started, which we thought was a big risk, but it worked out,” Kyriacou said.
It worked so well that they struggled to keep up with how fast products were flying off the shelves since the Pantry took off so quickly.
As a result, similar to what they did when Marble opened, they had to rethink the business structure and staffing to ensure the business could operate smoothly.
Despite how popular the Pantry has become, these improvements haven’t slowed. Higgs and Kyriacou are constantly sourcing new products, rearranging items to increase sales, and ensuring the experience improves daily.
“The important thing is when people walk into any of those stores, they know it’s us,” Higgs said. “When you walk into a space, you know it’s the Marble group or the Marble hospitality. That’s a given.”
Inside Pantry in Rosebank











Inside Marble










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