• When Gilly Walters first failed at an attempt to make “Mozart’s favourite dessert” for party guests at her home, she did not give up.
• Countless hours of recipe perfecting, hand-cutting, and local market punting and the first iteration of Wedgewood Nougat was born in 1999.
• Today, Wedgewood is listed in all major retailers, employs 180 staff, and has seven emporiums around the country. And it all started with never giving up.
• This is our first story in News24’s new weekly series SA Success Stories detailing the origin stories of successful SA businesses, NGOs and individuals.
• Our special site can be found here at SA Success Stories, proudly sponsored by Old Mutual Wealth.

Gilly Walters was due to host a music party in her family’s home in Howick in 1999, and she needed to bake some goodies to feed her guests.

She decided to make “Mozart’s favourite dessert” – which, of course, was not Mozart’s favourite – but wanted to impress the attending musos with a sticky dessert based on that ancient sweet delight, nougat.

It would be a hit, just like Mozart’s catalogue, and the gathered visitors would be both thoroughly chuffed and thoroughly fed.

“The dessert was an absolute failure,” says a laughing Paul Walters, Gilly’s son and CEO of Wedgewood Holdings.

“The nougat ran off the plate, she had to freeze it before she cut it… Anyway, she is what we call a tenacious old bat. We love our mom and she’s a passionate cook, so when she had this failure, she decided she was going to get it right.”

Six months later, after countless hours perfecting her recipe while husband Taffy cut the confection by hand in the family garage, they were ready to start selling their nougat to the local farmers’ market.

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“It was at that farmers’ market in 1999 where people first got to buy a nougat. It grew by word-of-mouth and started to be sold at local shops.”

And thus the first iteration of Wedgewood was born, named after the family farm.

The aromas of a family kitchen

Today, Wedgewood products are listed in all major retailers and it has seven emporiums around the country, including two recent openings at the V&A Waterfront and Hazelwood in Pretoria.

It employs 180 staff members, and still hand-cracks 70 000 eggs a month.

But at its core, Walters says, it’s still the humble business started out in a family kitchen that’s just simply grown organically over the last two decades.

And for him, those early memories were all about the aromas.

“They were interesting days. Our family kitchen has always been the heart of the family. So it would always be work, making nougat, and then the work would stop. Then we would have breakfast, and my mom would continue to make nougat, and then we would have lunch.

“Just the smell of nougat cooking is delicious, that warm honey and whipped egg white…”

Word-of-mouth and listings in local shops ensured that the operation would up the volume, leaving poor dad Taffy to fight a losing battle.

“Dad put up a brave fight to keep Mom out of his workshop, but he didn’t win. It grew out of the kitchen into the garage, and you’ll see Dad up until late at night hand-cutting the nougat. He did this for the first two years until my brothers came along and started automating it around 2002.”

Slow, steady growth

For Wedgewood, their journey is less of a whirlwind and more consistent, steady growth with an emphasis on building their brand. Profit was invested back into the business, and, most years, the growth would be steady.

“There’s never been a pivot,” Walters says.

“There’s nothing special that we’ve done other than my mom who created some wonderful recipes. South Africans are positive people and they are very encouraging. If you try to start a business elsewhere, nine people out of 10 will tell you not to do it. If you try and start one here, you’ll have 11 people out of 10 telling you to go for it.

“It grew very slowly. We have had organic growth of about 10 to 20%, not every year, but most years.”

In 2006, the team moved out of the garage and workshop and bought a farm close to their original home. It was an old dairy and today still hosts the Wedgewood factory.

“We had this vision of moving out and having barefoot kids running around and business being the beating heart of the family.”

It was here that they started exporting and getting assistance from government departments.

“The Department of Trade and Industry has supported small businesses for a long time, and they started to support us at South African trade shows abroad, maybe once or twice a year. It really helped us being exposed to international trends and customers.”

Emporiums, ice creams and an eye for gifting

Today, Wedgewood has seven emporiums and a brand built around beautiful gifts, the theme being flowers, honey and bees – but it was not always so.

“That is all, my wife,” Walters says with a laugh. “She’s trained as a fine artist, and she said to me, ‘we really need to improve the brand’.

“We were very much a home-spun farm-stall brand. We used to make our own little wooden boxes. It looked very at-home, and we thought that was our brand.”

Her early designs around 2010 doubled the sales of the team’s gift boxes, and the rest is history.

At the emporiums, they now also sell a unique nougat ice cream, developed by an ice cream maker friend named Jen, who created the recipe during the Covid-19 lockdown.

“It’s very much a South African shop. Every single thing in there is made in SA. Even the wallpapers are painted by my wife, or my son, or a friend, and get turned into giftboxes as well.

“We opened our first emporium in the KZN Midlands Piggly Wiggly, and it just brought us closer to the customers. And we realised our business wasn’t about selling confection. It was about giving them a moment of happiness, nothing more, nothing less.”

An ancient confection with a SA twist

The French will say that nougat’s classic version has its roots in the town of Montélimar. The Italians would argue that the confection torrone and the town of Cremona hold the honour. The Greeks would probably yell mandolato to claim the prize, while the Iranians also have a Middle Eastern delight called gaz.

The late 1990s and early 2000s saw a number of South African women lead the charge to produce a local version of nougat, including Coach House and Sally Williams.

“Those were three strong brands, and what came out of it is a South African slant on what Montélimar nougat is. Interestingly, our nougat is not as sweet as European nougat, and our mom loved that.

“Her love was probably inspired by all these South African women, and they were all ladies who started businesses out of their kitchens.”

SA is a great place for a lean startup

Wedgewood is now one of the leaders in its local sector, and will continue to stay close to its roots as its north star.

For Walters, looking back all those years, two things stand out.

Left with one final message to South Africans chasing their own business dreams, Walters said: “If you’ve got an idea, go for it. Go for it.

“Get some good mentors around you. There’s no better place than South Africa to launch a lean startup business. Ask your customers what they want and focus on the brand and let them help you grow it.”

*This is our first story in News24’s new weekly series SA Success Stories detailing the origin stories of successful SA names, businesses, individuals and NGOs, proudly sponsored by Old Mutual Wealth.