From kitchen experiments to a thriving meat empire

What started as an after-hours kitchen project in the Truter household has grown into the fully fledged meat empire Deli-Co. Brothers Pieter and Hendri Truter told Glenneis Kriel how they turned a local favourite into a multigenerational family business.

- Pieter and Hendri Truter

The story of Deli-Co began with Pieter Truter and his mother, Susan. After joining the 1 300ha family farm De la Fontaine near Riebeek-Kasteel in the Western Cape in 1992, Pieter quickly grew bored with the farm's daily routine. Like most farms in the Swartland at the time, operations centred around wheat, sheep and cattle production.

But it was not just the monotony that bothered him - it was the margins. "It became clear to me that the only way to break through the financial ceiling was to add value ourselves and sell directly to customers," he explains.

In 1993, Pieter finally persuaded his mother that it was time to do things differently. So, in the evenings, after the farm work was done, the two began processing lamb and mutton, and made sausages and minced meat using an old Kenwood meat grinder and sausage stuffer.

Finding a market was not difficult. The farm had already earned a reputation in their local church community thanks to the meat they supplied for the 'meat table' at the annual bazaar.

"People kept asking where and when they could get more of our boerewors and patties," Pieter recalls. "So, we started supplying the community - and as word spread, grew into other regions."

SMALL BEGINNINGS

To make the most of the offcuts, they began selling these in Esterhof, a nearby informal settlement.

"At first, we delivered meat to Esterhof on Wednesdays using our Sunday car – a Nissan Double Cab – and collected cash on Fridays when the people got paid. But people started asking for more meat when we came back, so we eventually changed our deliveries to Fridays."

Those Friday evenings were often long.

"We used to go there at 6pm and stay until everything was sold out. In Decembers, when demand spiked over the Christmas season, we sometimes stayed past midnight," says Pieter.