With close to 40 branches countrywide, Choppies Superstores, arguably one of Botswana’s biggest retail chain stores, has invested between P15 and P200 million in South Africa.
The latest official opening of Choppies Rustenburg on Friday is said to have created not less than 200 full-time job opportunities and 27 part-time jobs for the locals.
Many Rustenburg residents recently queued up to be counted amongst the first customers of the Choppies store situated in their town. The Rustenburg Local Municipality said that it was honoured to welcome the 6th Choppies outlet in the North West Province.
“In addition, you have employed not less than 500 locals countrywide. It therefore means you are assisting the government with the burden of creating sustainable jobs,” said councilor Olga Chauke, Member of the Mayoral Committee.
In Botswana, the ever-expanding franchise has more than 46 stores countrywide and has even provided job opportunities for the disabled in some of their outlets.
Earlier this year, Choppies said they are targeting to open 10 stores in South Africa.
Rustenburg Choppies joins 5 other branches based in other towns/villages in the Sepedi-Tswana region of North West Province.
To handle its marketing initiatives, Choppies appointed Tau ya Phoka, a 100 percent black-owned company in Rustenburg.
At its opening ceremony, Choppies identified two charity organizations to which it donated food parcels.
Badirammogo Caregiver, a centre catering for orphans, and Ntshalele le Bana Care Centre for the disabled received food parcels as Choppies’ way of trying to alleviate poverty in the town of Rustenburg.
Even though she sang praises for the store, Chauke also said that Choppies should be careful not to ignore the fact that South Africa has what they term Basic conditions of Employment that could assist the store in carrying out their long hours of operations.
“We wouldn’t want to see angry workers marching on you and demanding better wages plus better working conditions,” said Chauke. “It’s time to start working with organized labour to build good working relations.”
