The Foodies With A Drive For Business

Two taxi commuters who went on to become friends and tenacious business partners selling gourmet cuisine out of a food truck.

- Melitta Ngalonkulu

Look right, look left. You may well be sitting next to your future business partner. That’s what happened to Hezron Louw, the Johannesburg-based co-founder of Sumting Fresh, on one of his taxi commutes years ago, and one that set him off on another journey altogether in a food truck.

“I met this guy in the taxi. And he was reading a magazine about cakes and we started talking about cakes. And every day for about two and half years, we would meet in the same taxi line and we would talk about food,” recounts Louw, when we meet him at Grant Avenue, a trendy street in the garden suburb of Norwood in Johannesburg.

This is where Sumting Fresh is rustling up and selling taste (the gourmet company also sells out of a truck at Johannesburg’s vibrant food markets).

The guy Louw met in the taxi, Andrew Leeuw, would go on to found Sumting Fresh with him in 2012.

But before that, the friends-turned-business partners had hurdles to get past.

“We had 12 years apart in between before we saw each other again,” says Louw, the self-taught chef and media personality.

Louw and Leeuw grew up in the suburb of Ennerdale four blocks from each other but never met until the day destiny connected them at the taxi rank.

They were students at the time – Louw was studying for a BCom in accounting while Leeuw was studying to become a chef.

Though Louw dropped out of his course to work in the banking sector, Leeuw completed his studies and worked at resorts.

The common ground in their friendship was their deep, abiding love for food.

“One day, I was driving down the road with my brother and I see Andrew. I shout ‘hey my guy’, he shouts ‘hey my guy’. We had forgotten each other’s names.”

They went to have a beer and three months later, Sumting Fresh was born with no capital to back it.