LEHUDEBU Mohlabe has proven himself as a hard-working young man who, after resigning from a full-time job at an international air flight company because of a hostile relationship with the company’s management, emerged as a street vendor of a different kind.
Mohlabe refuses to join millions of his peers who are statistics of poverty and unemployment. In his three years of trying to find another job, he realised that starting a business was the only option to earn a living.
Right now, the 37-year-old sells muffins, coffee and hot chocolate in the middle of the busy streets of Centurion, between Pretoria and Midrand.
Through his portable business, established on August 8, called Mr CoffeeToCar, Mohlabe has become big on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. He has also been interviewed by 702 Radio’s Relebogile Mabotja about his unusual business.
During the interview, Mabotja described him as exemplary in that people who lost their jobs or businesses through the Covid-19 lockdown and economic meltdown should not give up hope as there are many ideas of picking up the pieces and moving on with life.
Mohlabe abandoned his five-year employment with Comair in 2019 due to irreconcilable differences. Armed with extensive working experience in the travel industry, he polished his CV and aggressively applied for a job without success because Covid-19 had damaged the tourism industry. He tried selling ice cream, and that also did not work.
As hunger was quickly hitting hard on his family, he had to think fast, which led to the birth of Mr CoffeeToCar this year.
Now, as early as 5am, the husband and father stands in the middle of traffic at the corner of Voortrekker Street and Marais Ave wearing a multi-purpose cross-body belt bag. The bag has multiple pockets to carry a Thermos bottle with boiling water, sachets of hot chocolate powder, coffee, sugar, and powdered milk. He also carries stirring sticks, paper cups and containers with either muffins or scones.
Mohlabe does all this to make it easier for motorists who, because of their morning rush to work, do not have time to divert from their route to go to convenience shops to get breakfast.
“I stand in the middle of the traffic, and when you stop your car, you don’t do anything except rolling down your window, and I prepare your coffee and hot chocolate within 10 seconds, then you drive away,” Mohlabe said.
Prior to starting Mr CoffeeToCar, he used some of the money he earned from Comair to start an ice cream business, and this failed because he did not have the right equipment to prevent it from melting quickly. Then he developed the idea of selling coffee.
Mohlabe said during his research, he would wake up early in the morning and drive around to see if there was anyone who was doing this business, and he found none.
Motorists in big cities like Johannesburg and Pretoria spend hours in agonisingly slow-moving bumper-to-bumper traffic before they get to their workplaces. Sometimes they leave their homes without having breakfast to get to work on time.
Mohlabe said his business makes life even better than going to a drive-thru coffee shop, where motorists also have to wait a while for service.
“Then I thought, why is there no person who sells coffee at the robots? Then I decided to be that person,” he said. “If you leave your house during load shedding, it means you do not get your morning cup of coffee, and here I am.”
He said his employed wife liked the idea as it brings much-needed additional income to the house. When he started his business, he used to push a loaded trolley, but metro police warned him that the trolley was disturbing the traffic flow.
“One police officer gave me a plan that if I have everything attached to my body, they will stop giving me trouble. Then I made this cross-body belt bag with specialised pockets where I put various items,” he said.
Now he is planning to register the business and start franchising it in order to expand it for the benefit of other unemployed people elsewhere in the country. He is thinking of also opening a coffee shop.
“The coffee shop will mostly be an office space, as people I will employ will go out to the robots and sell, as I do,” said Mohlabe.