We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jordan Lazarus. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jordan below.

Jordan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

I started Lekker Eats in 2020. I started making food for friends at my yoga studio which turned into cooking out of my sister’s home kitchen and doing weekly pick-ups for close family and friends. This little operation started to grow quickly and I soon needed a commercial kitchen to keep up with all of the orders I was receiving. A close friend of mine runs a kitchen locally and allowed me to use her space two days a week. The only catch was I was not able to leave any food or equipment in the kitchen so that’s when I decided to turn my second bedroom in my apartment into my “Lekker Eats Dry-Store”. I bought shelves and organized all of my paper products, packaging products, dry ingredients and equipment right at home. Once I started cooking from this kitchen, I started doing weekly deliveries instead of pick ups. I was using excel spreadsheet to keep track of the orders and addresses because I was not only cooking but also delivering everything myself. I would go grocery shopping the day before delivery and would unpack all of the food up to my fridge on the third floor of my apartment building and would wake up the next morning around 5am to take all of my food, equipment and supplies back downstairs and load it into my car. I would arrive at the kitchen around 6am and would unload my car and get to cooking. Once all of the food was prepared I would package and fill each bag with each order. I would clean down the kitchen and load up the car with all of my supplies and equipment and orders to be delivered. I would finish delivering around 8pm and would then have to carry everything back up to my third floor apartment. I did this 17 times! I was at a point where I needed a place to leave my equipment and ingredients to cut out a few hours of extra work each day. Around this time my Dad graciously bought me a dual stove and oven and placed it in a kitchen at his business, Myrtle Waves. Yes, you read that correct, I moved myself into the waterpark kitchen during the off season, lucky me! This is when the business really began to take off. I had a website made and began taking orders from there (so much better than excel spreadsheets) and I hired a delivery driver (my first and forever favorite employee) and began having two delivery days a week! I did this for a few months and let the business grow! It came time for the waterpark to start getting ready for the season which meant I needed to get out of there but my business was really a business now! It was time for Lekker Eats to have its own kitchen! I found out that a local restaurant space had just gone on the market and I was there first thing the next morning to take a look! It was PERFECT. A fixer upper for sure, but exactly what little Lekker Eats needed for its first location! I signed the paperwork and two weeks later I had keys in hand! It was time to get to work! I spent two months renovating and making this location as lekker as I could! We opened our doors April 2021 and just like that we were open 6 days a week with a fridge full of food that used to be made out of my sister’s kitchen! Fast forward two years, well let’s not forget to mention that this was probably the best two years of my life. I learned how to run a business, I had a staff I loved dearly, I made friends with my customers, I learned about myself, about food, about business. It was a two year learning and growing experience that I never knew would be possible. I made mistakes but learned from them. I listened to any and every piece of advice that was graciously given to me. I asked questions when I didn’t have the answers. But most importantly I grew and so did my business. As much as I loved our first location, it came to a point where we truly outgrew the space. Now fast forward to today and I am sitting in my new office in my new restaurant space writing this as construction is almost complete to Lekker Eat’s newest and biggest location yet! I am in awe of the blessings that have been bestowed upon myself and Lekker Eats. It truly is a dream that I am able to do what I love every single day and call it work. I just pray that the growth and learning continues as we open this new space!

Jordan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I worked as a sous chef on private yachts and traveled the world cooking. I attended culinary school in Cape Town, South Africa where I not only fell in love with Africa but also food. I traveled here many times and it became the biggest source of training and experience in the kitchen. While living in South Africa I had the biggest personal growth that I had ever seen in myself and still consider it to be the most transcendent time in my life. So, when I was trying to find the perfect name for my new business I knew I needed to bring my travels and experiences from around the world home to share with everyone here. That is when Lekker Eats was born. Lekker is the native way in South Africa to say “all is good”. It is an afrikaans slang term used and was one of my favorite terms I learned during my time there. Whether the food is lekker or the music is lekker, it is just always lekker to be lekker! It is a fun term and it was my motivation to create a space that everyone could enjoy, a space that was truly lekker!

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I built a brand based on honesty, kindness, fun and yummy food. The biggest thing I tell my employees is that when our customers leave Lekker Eats I want them to always feel lighter and brighter than when they walked through the door. This goal is attained by a few things, starting with the kindness my staff offers, whether helping someone choose what is right for them off of the menu or by something as simple as saying “Hi, welcome in!” with a smile. We create a vibe with our fun bouncy music and bright yellow lights and happy live plants all around. We aim to create an environment that is uplifting and when you combine that with extremely yummy healthy food, it is inevitable that each person who visits us will have a smile on their face! Some people will immediately say “ick” when they hear healthy food. So at Lekker Eats we grab those types of people with our aesthetic and then once they try the food they realize that healthy food can be fun and yummy too! I think this is something that sets us apart from other businesses in our market. We are about so much more than healthy food. Lekker Eats is a culture of its own.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Before I was a chef I was a stewardess on private yachts. While I was working on a yacht in Italy, I was hospitalized and diagnosed with Type One Diabetes. This was the catalyst for my interest in cooking. I had to learn to carb count so I could give myself the proper dosage of insulin daily and knowing that this was now my life I decided that I wanted to always be in control of my food because my health would benefit significantly if I was. This was a huge turning point in my life because this was when I decided to go to culinary school. Being diagnosed with an incurable disease was not ideal at the age of 24 but I look at it as a blessing in disguise. Had I not been diagnosed I probably would have never decided to go to culinary school and if I had not gone to culinary school I surely wouldn’t own Lekker Eats. I believe how I took my diagnosis and ran with it truly illustrates my resilience.

Contact Info:

• Website: lekkereats.com
• Instagram: lekkereats_mb
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lekkereats
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/lekker-eats-myrtle-beach?osq=lekker+eats