A walk down history lane with the man behind the plan… Tobie v/d Spuy.

At the age of six years, early in 1964, our family moved to Melkbosstrand which in those years was a very quiet holiday resort with e few hundred permanent residents. In those years money was valuable and scarce, kids never received any pocket money, so plans had to be made to earn “an income”. My father built me a “kiskar”, hand driven with wheelbarrow wheels, my most valuable possession at the time. Walking along the coast I saw an opportunity to turn goods into money. I starting picking up empty bottles and sold them to the local shop for half a cent each. My first income I used to buy a “BB gun”, very proud of myself that it took hard work to be able to buy it myself. As time went past, I collected more and more empty bottles and later realized that I could get much more for it if I could transport it to Maitland. Every Saturday my father took a load of bottles for me in his 1956 Renault, I made more and more money and started saving to buy a bakkie, so in 1965 there was enough money to buy a Datsun bakkie for R750.00, two years later it was involved in an accident and a write-off, we then bought a Bedford truck and started to buy in empty bottles from liquor stores and hotels from Hermanus to Velddrif, Moorreesburg, Malmesbury  and off course the Cape Peninsula and also employed a permanent driver. We later started to sell the bottles directly to the wineries and even earned a bigger income. Later a deposit system was introduced to screw cap and beer bottles and corked bottles was not taken back at all. We found a recycling plant for corked empty bottles and that market flourished, during 1986 we already bought and sold over R1m bottles annually. Labor became expensive and during 1987 I was involved in a serious motor car accident and was forced to close the business.

After my recovery and after I started to work as a junior auditor, I still had the ambition to start my own business one day. On the 31st of December 1992 my wife and myself finally decided to make 1993 the make or break year and was granted a liquor store license later that same year. On 6 th October 1993, with no knowledge of selling liquor and with very little capital Liquorette opened for business. We very soon started to concentrate on value for money wines and through the years expanded that market extensively.

During 1999 we heard about a new shopping centre to be build in Melkbboostrand while on a rugby Craven Week in Kimberley. We soon got the right for a liquor store and on 25 th October 2000 we started Liquor Cellars in the Birkenhead Shopping centre. Both stores have become well-known in the liquor store community with competitive prices and excellent service.

During November 2005, our oldest son, Thomas started to look after the liquor stores, with us intending to retire, but then another opportunity came our way and on 1 st March 2006 we bought Druiwetros Liquor store in Malmesbury.

We now had a formidable team to reckon with ever increasing our buying power, expanding on selling wholesale to other liquor stores and hopefully to expand on the small group in the near future.