Greendale Acres

The fifth in a series of getting to know the faces behind our privately owned stores 👋🏼

Franki De Gouveia from Bibs Biltong 🤎

"When I finished school, I went abroad for a year and I worked for the traveling carnival. When I got back I decided, apparently, it was time to be an adult. So I got a job at a school I was working admin. And I did all of that for like four years. I was totally bored. So I decided to go abroad. Again, I worked for the cruise ships for a year and I didn't enjoy that. So I went back to the carnival. I've been working for the carnival ever since. I'm there for nine months at a time. But my plan was always going to be to open a business in South Africa.

And then COVID hit for a year. So yeah, after sitting at home for a year - I come to this spot every day because I'm local. And I saw that there were shops available. And I just thought, let's see.

I'll take nothing away from your butcheries within the Midlands, I think the Midlands has some of the most amazing butcheries and you can go in and get a good quality slab of biltong in your butcheries. But you can't necessarily walk in and get your snap sticks. Your chips. I do chicken, I do bacon. And I've also got a variety of different game meats as well. So again, I was never going into competition with the butcheries in the area. It was more aiming for variation.

If you go into my shop, you'll also see that everything is local. I think it's important that when you open something as an individual, why not try and support other people.

The company is named after my gran. We've actually got a picture of her up in the shop."