Smasht. has quietly opened at Somerset Mall. I take a closer look at the Halaal burger brand, its beginnings and why it chose the Helderberg.
When I visited Somerset Mall last Friday to see the newly opened food and entertainment court, Smasht. was still firmly behind the hoarding. A few days later, that changed. The Halaal burger restaurant soft-launched at the new Somerset Mall precinct on Tuesday, 1 September, quietly opening its doors while the team gets its new staff trained and prepares for a bigger public launch.
I sat down with Smasht. founder Tameem Jakoet and operations manager Ronan Ferreira to find out more about the business, how it went from a burger operation in Jakoet’s grandmother’s yard to its latest Somerset Mall outlet, and why the Helderberg is now part of its expansion plans.
From a dare in a grandmother’s yard
Smasht. began with a challenge from Jakoet’s brothers. Coming from a family of food lovers, he was told that after trying a number of smash burgers, he surely could not make one better.
He spent about a year experimenting with different combinations and ratios of lean mince to fat before settling on his own recipe. When he eventually made the burgers for his family, their reaction was that he should start selling them.
The first Smasht. operation was set up in his grandmother’s yard, initially trading only on weekends. It did not take long before word spread. “The hype took over,” Jakoet said.
Customers began filling the roads around the neighbourhood, eventually resulting in complaints from neighbours who had not quite signed up for a burger business outside their homes. That forced Jakoet to look for a permanent premises.
He eventually found a small lane on Belvedere Road, between a pharmacy and a carpet shop. His father, a contractor, saw the potential in the site, and after roughly two months of renovations, it became Smasht.’s first proper store. That store is still operating today.
Why Somerset Mall?
Smasht. had been looking for an opportunity to move into a shopping mall when an enquiry about Canal Walk unexpectedly led the team towards Somerset Mall. Property managers told Jakoet about the new food and entertainment court and the other brands that would be opening there. The team was initially uncertain about the area because they did not know the local demographic particularly well.
Then they came for a site visit.
During a Tuesday visit, Jakoet and his business partner stopped at one of the popular eateries in the mall and asked how many orders the store had processed. It was around 11am and, according to Jakoet, they were told that about 150 orders had already gone through.
For the team, that was an indication of the potential activity around the new development and helped make the decision to take the Somerset Mall opportunity.
There was another reason to make the move. Smasht. already has a Long Street outlet in the works, but its opening has been held up by gas compliance approval. Rather than simply continue paying rent while waiting for that process, the business decided to put its energy and investment into another location. And so Somerset West became its next move.
What is on the menu?
The Somerset Mall menu keeps things relatively focused, centred around the smash burgers that started the business. The Classic combines two 80g smashed beef patties, cheese, onion, pickle, mustard and ketchup on a toasted brioche bun. The Chilli Cheese uses the same two 80g patties, with cheese, spicy sauce and jalapeños.
Both are priced at R90. There are also fries for R20, loaded fries for R50 and Smasht Fries for R70, with the latter topped with a smashed patty, cheese, spicy sauce and jalapeños. Shakes are available in chocolate, strawberry and vanilla for R60, alongside water and soft drinks.
The pricing caught my attention. For a shopping-centre food offering, having the two main burgers below R100 makes Smasht. an interesting option for anyone looking for a burger without moving too far beyond that mark. The Junior Smash and a limited-edition Smasht. burger are listed as coming soon.
A partnership built around different strengths
Jakoet is joined in the business by Ronan Ferreira, who is Smasht.’s operations manager. The two first met through the food industry after Ferreira approached Jakoet about renting his food truck. That initial relationship eventually developed into a business partnership.
Their backgrounds are quite different, which is precisely what makes the arrangement work. Jakoet handles the more visible side of Smasht., including marketing and IT, while Ferreira focuses on the operational side, particularly supply chain and logistics.
Ferreira runs WC Ital Deli, which imports more than 1,000 product lines from Europe and elsewhere and supplies them locally. He also comes from a family with decades of experience in catering and hospitality.
“I can, in a single day in our catering facility, feed up to 10,000 people,” Ferreira said, explaining the experience he brings to the partnership and its plans for scaling the business.
The two say they have a five-year plan to roll out as many Smasht. stores as possible, with Johannesburg already among the markets they want to explore.
A new market for Smasht.
The Helderberg is, however, a new market for the brand. Ferreira, who originally comes from Johannesburg, says he did not know Somerset West particularly well when the opportunity arose. He knew the parts of Cape Town where he had spent the past three years, but the Helderberg was less familiar territory.
Looking at the numbers changed his perspective. He believes the area has a substantial population and strong spending power, while there is also an opportunity for Smasht. to establish itself in a part of the market where it has not previously had much presence.
“We’ve never captured the Somerset Mall area,” he said. “So I think this is a new challenge for us.”
The wider Helderberg also gives the business an interesting catchment area, with Somerset West, Strand and Gordon’s Bay effectively forming one connected market for a business operating from the mall.
The bigger launch is still to come
The new Somerset Mall team has largely been recruited from the Strand area, while experienced Smasht. staff from the existing outlet have come across to help train them.
Jakoet says the plan is to spend the first week getting the new employees comfortable with the operation before making the larger announcement. That launch is expected to include a giveaway of 100 Smasht. burgers, with Little Lemons, a lemonade business that partners with Smasht., also planning to give away 100 lemonades.
The exact mechanics were still being worked out when I spoke to the team, partly because the business wants to make sure the giveaway reaches the customers it is trying to introduce to the brand rather than simply becoming a giveaway for people already working at the mall.
For now, Smasht. is settling into Somerset Mall while its new team gets up to speed. The bigger launch will follow, but the burgers are already being served, giving Helderberg shoppers their first opportunity to see what started as a family dare for themselves.
Smasht. is now open at Somerset Mall’s new food and entertainment court.
