OnTap Magazine

Legendary on the South African craft beer scene, Banana Jam was a hugely successful Caribbean restaurant long before craft beer became a draw card. Thanks to constant tweaks and innovations, the restaurant turned 25 this November. Co-founder Greg Casey told us how it all happened. There are stats often quoted about the high proportion of restaurants that close in the first year, but you’ve managed to make it to 25 – what’s the secret to your success? Consistency. For me, good service and a good vibe are more important than fancy food. We always wanted to have really good, friendly service and consistent food. We have one customer that’s been coming here for 25 years and only ever orders the jerk chicken pasta. I made one small change to the recipe recently and this particular customer was up in arms. You also have to strike a balance between consistency and innovation. Add new things, but don’t change what’s working. Also, having ADHD helps… Adding craft beer when you did was a very smart move. How did it enhance the business? Craft beer did make a big difference to us and recognising that early on certainly gave the business a boost. We started doing Jack Black in 2007 – we were the second place they installed a tap after the Mount Nelson. SAB didn’t want to give us a tap and Jack Black did. Around that time, draught started to make a comeback, so a couple of years later we installed what I think was the first U bar in South Africa. I took a photo of one in the States and showed it to our handyman to copy. We had eight lines then and we struggled to fill them. Today we have 30 lines, with more than half pouring our in-house beers from Afro Caribbean Brewing Company. You’re known for spending half the year travelling around the world – how do you manage to do that and still run a successful business? Primarily, it comes down to having passionate, dedicated staff. Technology also helps – for example you can look at online customer reviews, check the time stamp and then go back to the cameras and see where things went wrong and then rectify that problem. I do get a lot of inspiration from my trips so in many ways travelling has helped the business stay strong. What are some of the highlights of the past 25 years? Just getting the business was quite a highlight! We bought an Italian restaurant, got the keys, and arrived to a bunch of staff we didn’t know. We said “hi we’re the new owners – do what you do,” and just ran it as an Italian place for the first month until we worked out what we were going to do. About two months in, we turned R1000 in one night and we thought, we might just make it! We started a cocktail happy hour in about the third month and things exploded. We were the only place in the Southern Suburbs that was doing a cocktail happy hour and one day a slip came in that didn’t have a table number. It just said “three guys blue car”. We’d become so busy people couldn’t get in and were leaning against their cars in the car park having a cocktail! A more recent highlight was in 2012 when we got Rogue Ales in the States to agree to export to us – that was a big boost to our reputation as a craft beer place. And the biggest challenges? Starting out with nothing. We got a high-risk loan to open the restaurant and just started trading. The first customer we had paid with a R100 note and we had to go next door to get change because we literally had an empty till. Andone of the scariest things was building the upstairs to create the brewery because I project managed that myself. What’s your favourite dish that’s ever appeared on the menu? Maybe the Jamacos – tacos made with the Cuban flat bread. They’re only on our secret menu though, for very regular customers. I really liked the feta prawn pasta as well – we need to bring it back. What’s next for Banana Jam? There’s nothing radical on the radar. More beers, more parties. I found some cool new dishes on my last trip that I can adapt into Banana Jam style dishes. And of course, lots of new beers, including two collabs with Asian breweries that we’d like to enter into next year’s Asian Beer Awards. BANANA JAM CAFÉ Banana Jam Cofounders Greg Casey and Shannon McGovern 52 | Summer 2024 | ontapmag.co.za