Obakeng Tlhapi

Background

About Obakeng Tlhapi

Obakeng is a lifelong learner who goes an extra mile towards executing tasks given. He is teachable and has a continuous improvement mindset. He is also solutions-driven and has both hands-on technical experience and commercial experience in the food and restaurant business. My career started at Intercontinental Hotel, Johannesburg Sandton towers as a food and beverage management Intern. I worked under the mentorship of the food and beverage manager and through that, I managed to contribute to the growth of the food and beverage department in 2018. Some of the accomplishments during my tenure there were being mentioned on trip advisor consistently every month for good service which led to being awarded the management trainee of the year 2018. I further went on to broaden my knowledge and experience at Famous brands as a leading brands product development intern where I worked closely with the leading brands' executive product developer. I worked across all the leading brands (Steers, Debonairs Pizza, Milky lane, Fego Cafe, FishAways, Wimpy & Mug & Bean). During my time at famous brands I worked with experienced product developers on various menu innovation projects that included creating new innovative menu items that are aligned with the specific brand strategy, Managing cross-functional teams from product concept to launch, identifying what works and what doesn’t work through Menu analysis & engineering, Final menu sign offs, promotional photoshoots, developing pipelines for menu innovations, developing promotional calendar products, recipe costing & pricing, ensuring recipes are standardized, and menu items are accurately developed and launched. I joined Boxer superstores as a Bakery and Deli management trainee this is where I gathered the hard skills of Bakery management and Deli management in the retail industry which added to my current knowledge and experience My Journey so far shows how agile and flexible I am to adapt to different roles in the food industry and my ability to learn, unlearn and relearn. I currently develop menus for Fego Caffe, Vovo Telo, Coffee Corture, Europa, Netcafe & Pick 'n Pay coffee carts