CEO Pienaar quits Taste Holdings
Taste Holdings, which is moving away from fast foods to luxury goods, announced on Tuesday that CEO Dylan Pienaar had stepped down with immediate effect.
Taste Holdings, which is moving away from fast foods to luxury goods, announced on Tuesday that CEO Dylan Pienaar has stepped down with immediate effect.
Taste, the share price of which slumped from R5.25 in July 2015 to 4c, has recently offloaded food businesses in a desperate bid to exit the fastfood industry. These include the Fish & Chip Co and Maxi’s.
The company recently announced the sale of the SA Starbucks franchise for R7m.
Taste said Pienaar was stepping down “given the revision in Taste’s strategy to become a luxury-goods business and having successfully navigated the sale and transition of Starbucks, restaurant chain Maxi’s and the Fish & Chip Co”.
The struggling company, which has lost 51.82% of its value since the beginning of 2019, said Duncan Crosson, head of the Taste luxury goods division, had been appointed group CEO with effect from the same date on which Pienaar is to leave.
Before joining Taste Holdings, Pienaar spent 10 years at Grand Parade Investments Limited (GPI), mainly as its chief financial officer and more recently as the CEO of its food division.
Taste said in November that it had decided to abandon its food businesses because it could not secure the funding needed to expand the food brands. To achieve positive cash flow, the company said, Starbucks would have had to expand to between 150 and 200 outlets, while Domino’s would have needed as many as 280 restaurants.
In the company’s year to end-February, it had 12 Starbucks stores and 81 Domino’s Pizza outlets. It said it could not secure funding for such expansion “given the current structure of the business and existing market conditions”.
After the disposal, Taste will consist of NWJ, Arthur Kaplan and World’s Finest Watches.