How Relebogile Kgoadi fuels his taste and hunger for business success with his trusty Mac
From the fashion industry to a pop of flavour on the foodie scene, we caught up with Relebogile, aka Lebo, to see what fuels his hunger for business success and why he chooses to navigate the journey with Mac.
Sugar, spice, and like most things nice, Mzansi’s tapestry of communities are all woven together by one common thread – a love for sharing quality time over a hearty and wholesome meal.
With traditional dishes that stand as emblems for Saffa culture – from Chakalaka to Hertzoggies – we are often known by our flavours as much as we are known by our history.
Mixing in his signature style and flair, Relebogile Kgoadi, who goes by Lebo, from Soweto, Johannesburg, has brought people together in his community over the tasty food served at his restaurant Native Rebels.
We caught up with Lebo on a call to hear more about his food business journey and the Mac products he uses to manage and grow his business.
Having grown up in and living in Soweto's Protea North area, Lebo and his team decided to build their business in the heart of Soweto in Central Western Jabavu.
Here, the Native Rebels team have been crafting food memories for the past seven years.
Driven by a desire to help support his family and community at home, Lebo founded his restaurant with a business-minded approach.
“I’ve always been a foodie – I love food, I love eating – I don’t cook professionally or as a chef. I just do the tasting and eating,” he chuckles through the call.
“What inspired me is, obviously, money being a motivator as well as my background and wanting to help out at home and gain financial independence.”
In fact, this isn’t Lebo’s first business venture. Before getting a taste of the restaurant industry, Lebo tried his hand at fashion – a business he also felt operated smoothly with the trust of Mac.
“I used to own a clothing shop in town called Fashion Crowd – and, even there, I was using Apple products,” he shares.
As for his day-to-day tasks running a food empire, his time is mostly spent on the operational side of the business processes and networking with new business partners or clients.
“I’m involved a lot in the operations. On the operational side, I open up the shop, handle stock taking, orders, and carry out most of the collections as a lot of my suppliers don’t handle deliveries,” he explains.
“The latter half of my day is mostly around hosting my guests and socialising with clientele.”
Keeping track of operational tasks, bookings, and clients is no small feat – this is why Lebo puts his faith in the Apple tech suite.
His go-to device is his durable iPhone SE which allows him to stay connected on the go with his schedule, restaurant team, suppliers and clients.
“I use an iPhone SE – that’s my primary device that I use for emails, class, and even this meeting now,” he quips with a laugh.
And when he needs to amp up the power and screen size, Lebo opts for his MacBook Air M2 or one of his four iPads.
“I also use the MacBook Air M2 when I do my admin work – so this would be handling salaries, banking, reconciliations and the like,” he explains.
“I’ve got about four iPads – two are with my kids and the other two are at the shop. For daily trading, we use the iPad at the shop for Lightspeed POS transactions.”
One of the hearty elements of his Apple suite that Lebo appreciates is the ability to streamline his business financial transactions and use Adobe and Microsoft Suite tools without any hassle or glitches.
“On my personal phone all my cards are linked to my wallet – making my payments secure and easy,” he shares. “I use a lot of Excel, PowerPoint, PDFs, and design tools occasionally which all work great on Mac.”
And when he’s not working on the devices – he values the tech capabilities to share files seamlessly with his team and liaisons through the AirDrop feature.
“When we do our monthly meetings with my team – especially my designer, we do a lot of AirDrop-ping between our devices,” elaborates Lebo. “I’ll send documents that he needs to design, and he’ll send them back while we’re just sitting around each other – it’s convenient.”
Running his business on Apple means he touches base with his local iStore whenever he may need to upgrade, update, or fix devices.
In fact, Lebo recently cracked his MacBook’s screen and returned it to the iStore to be fixed while working from home off one of his children’s iPads.
“Just the other week I broke a screen and had to take one of my son’s iPads while the other got fixed,” he muses.
“My service with the iStore team has been brilliant. With insurance, sometimes they collect the devices and go through their accredited repairers, but with iStore it’s always been fantastic.”
As for what’s next for the Native Rebels cuisine team – Lebo hopes to grow his business reach and use new and evolving tech and software for that growth.
“We’re looking so much into the technology space with how things are moving and how people are using apps and their phones,” he shares.
“We want to also go into that world and develop our very own app where people will be able to do a bit of social media among themselves and interact with an online store. We also want to possibly get into some sort of reward programme that our customers can benefit from in the future.”
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