Ocean Basket Case Study

The evolution story of Ocean Basket has the hallmarks of early humble beginnings to now being a seafood franchise restaurant playing in the big leagues.

The story of one of the entrepreneurial successes in South Africa goes like this. With as little as R800 in starting capital, the sons of Greek immigrant parents Peter “Fats” Lazarides and his brother George founded Ocean Basket in 1995 – opening the first restaurant in Menlyn Park Centre in Pretoria.

The startup capital was limiting to the founders, as the inaugural restaurant covered a meagre 60 square meters with only six tables and basic seafood dishes like hake, calamari, kingklip and prawns. A further hurdle was courtesy of its then landlord, who imposed restrictions on what Ocean

Going global

Most businesses navigate through several cycles. One of the cycles is success, a stage where businesses exploit their accomplishments by expanding to build further scale. Arguably, Ocean Basket is in this stage, as it prepares its business model for more international markets.

It plans to make its foray into the world’s second-largest economy China in December, where it will open a restaurant in the capital of Beijing. It has also unveiled its ambitions to open a further 76 restaurants in markets such as Kazakhstan, Qatar and Oman.

These are big plans for a business which was born out of a joint venture between eateries Steers and Fishaways (both owned by JSE-listed franchise giant Famous Brands) – after Fats decided to not build Fishaways and opted to grow Ocean Basket.

Steering the ship to international markets is the Lazarides family and business head Grace Harding, who ditched her employee engagement business to join Ocean Basket in 2012 to manage and grow the

“The foundation of Ocean Basket is all about culture, family, warmth and generosity. The reason why we don’t want to roll out many restaurants is that we are protective of restaurants. The founders care about good food and happy customers in the restaurants and they want to get franchisees to similar levels of quality and standards,” she tells Moneyweb.

Going beyond South Africa is no feat. Taking a brand that customers are not familiar with in some markets, finding trusted expansion partners and getting the supply chain mix right are challenges that Ocean Basket will grapple with. Just on its supply chain, the business already imports and supplies 6 500 tonnes of seafood each year to its global restaurants.

It’s having to refine its menu offering for China, especially when it comes to sushi, a staple for consumers in Asia-Pacific regions. Ocean Basket’s marketing lead Jean Sloane says different variations of sushi will be introduced such as its new “Mediterrasian sushi”, a Japanese sushi with a Mediterranean