“My grandfather adored my father, and when my father died, all that love was for me as well; he was obsessed with me,” says Stacey Barbaglia. “I called him Papa because my father had died, but Poppy I called Yiayia (Greek for grandmother).”
“They worshipped her,” says her mother, Barbara.
Stacey often stayed with her grandparents and was always at their house over weekends. “Papa used to give me seven kisses on my head every morning and every night, and used to say, ‘For you I’ll kill the bull’, a dozen times a day.” And already back then he gave her some marital advice: “Stacey, when the money is gone, love flies out the window.”
On a Sunday morning George would wake Stacey up at 5am, summer and winter, and stand on the diving board and count up to 50 in Greek for her to finish the laps she was swimming. Then he would spoil her with pancakes at the Koffiehuis in the Carlton Centre, but first she had to endure those kitchen inspections. After breakfast he took her ice skating, and he bought her a pair of snow-white ice-skating boots. “He spoilt me rotten,” she says.
Her grandmother, who lip-read, taught her Rummy. Poppy loved flowers, and she loved gardening. “She was the most peaceful, beautiful, kind and warm soul,” says Stacey. “A lovely, gentle lady,” her mother agrees.
But not even the joy that little girl brought him could help George withstand the temptation of alcohol. That Poppy was diagnosed with cancer soon after Georgie passed away, did not help matters.
When Stacey and her mother moved to America two years after his son’s death, George was heartbroken. He phoned her every day. Barbara says she was in such a state after Georgie’s death, “and nobody asked how we were going to live”. She thought that her sister in America might be the answer, but even after moving there they could not get their immigration papers sorted out.
Before they left, the executors of Georgie’s will, George and an accountant, came with an offer. They said the business was crumbling and that the only way to salvage it was to make it worth John’s while to get more involved. To do that, he needed shares. The alternative would be that John would go and live in London with Arthur. Lulu and Poppy were getting old, so they wouldn’t be able to run the commissary for much longer. The commissary was the only real lifeline the business had left. “Then there would be nothing,” they said. They offered Barbara R20 000 for Stacey’s shares.
“My mother wasn’t an executor because she was so incredibly depressed, and she had a liking for the casino,” explains Stacey.
“I was in a bad state after Georgie’s death,” says Barbara. “Somebody should have said, leave 10 per cent for the child, the grandfather should have said that. To be fair, the shares were nowhere near what they would be worth today, but if I was in my right mind, I should have kept half for my child.” She followed George’s advice and sold the shares in a regretful move that would be partly resolved years later.
John, who is said to have been too young and not really keen on the business – or in Stacey’s words, “eating brown rice, meditating, doing yoga and listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones” – was about to change what everyone thought. At the time he had a much older girlfriend and his hairstyle also wasn’t to his father’s liking.
“George said I must tell John he would buy him a car if he cut his hair, but John replied he would buy his own car,” remembers Peter Halamandaris. John was vegetarian at the time, and to this day feels a little guilty about eating meat or fish.
John, who was by now in his early twenties, was still running the Berea outlet, had some responsibilities at the central kitchen and had to administer the last of the franchise businesses. By now the other steakhouses they had shares in had been sold off, the franchises were dying off slowly and they had put the Burger Ranch franchises on the back burner. The outlets would, by the early 1980s, be reduced to the one in Bellevue, which Fanis ran, and the Berea steakhouse.
Steers was more effective, modern and in tune with what was required at the time. It was doing well, and the central kitchen supplied the condiments – as well as to a lot of dissident franchisees and other restaurants that had never been in the stable.
John reckons it must have been round about this time that they finally parted ways with Allen Ambor and Spur.
After the opening of the first two Spurs in Newlands and Sea Point in 1967 and 1968, Allen decided he wanted to franchise Spur. In July 1971 he franchised the first outlet, the Silver Spur in Bellville. He decided to give the Halamandres family 18 per cent of the royalty stream.
John seems to remember that his family was supposed to get 50 per cent from the royalty revenue stream, but Allen denies this. “There was no 50/50 partnership; it was my franchise company, not theirs, and when I decided to franchise, they accepted it.”
But John says he recalls that at some stage Allen decided that the family wasn’t doing its share to earn the said 50 per cent of the royalties, and that they thought Allen’s allegation was true and accepted it as such. John remembers the royalties were then reduced to 25 per cent while his brother, Georgie, was still alive.
Allen denies any knowledge of either a 50 per cent or a 25 per cent arrangement. He insists he gave the family 18 per cent of the royalties of the franchise company in lieu of the original franchise agreement; it was a swop for the agreement regarding the first two Spurs. “They had no obligation whatsoever; I simply gave them the royalties because I wanted to remain friends,” he insists.
John says he can’t prove what either he or Allen claims, because Famous Brands doesn’t have those franchise agreements any more, and he doesn’t know whether Allen has copies either.
Says Allen, “The final split between us came after George Halamandres offered to sell me the failed Berea steakhouse and I didn’t want it.” He says he told George he wasn’t interested and George then said that they should part ways. It was an amicable split, which was concluded during a telephone conversation between George and Allen. He says he paid George R18 000 for the family’s 18 per cent share of the franchise company’s royalty income.
“We were no longer in business together, but there was no bad blood,” says Allen. He even attended Georgie’s funeral, he says.
In 2010 Allen referred to the shared stakes in the franchising business to illustrate that he remained on good terms with the family and that there was never a “falling out”. “But they did go their separate ways as the original Steers Steakhouse concept evolved into the fast food, counter-serviced niche,” he told Finweek.
John seems to remember Allen saying that if they didn’t accept the R18 000, he would take them to court. Allen says that is an outright lie. “It is a libellous statement – I never threatened to take them to court.” He also says that he never dealt with John in business either, only with George. John says his family was very vulnerable at the time and recalls the events differently. Their accountant, Leon Katz, advised him against a legal battle. “In my view Allen . . . has an unpaid debt to my family in terms of recognition,” says John.
“I have said all along that I learned from George,” says Allen. “However, in our hour of need they deserted us.”
Today, Spur Corporation has 249 Spur Steak Ranches outlets across South Africa and 31 in other countries, with an annual restaurant turnover of R2,7 billion. The group owns the Panarottis Pizza Pasta, John Dory’s Fish & Grill and DoRego’s brands too. The company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1986 and is worth more than R2 billion. Allen says the company listed because Mike’s Kitchen was going public and he didn’t want their company to look like the poor relative or as if it was “lagging behind”.
On their website under the heading “Our story” you can see how their logo evolved from the spurs on a cowboy’s boot to a sheriff’s badge to the Red Indian. “Brands are built, one restaurant isn’t a brand,” says Allen. He reckons that only once there were more than 30 outlets “did the Spur brand begin to emerge”. When they