STRATEGY
TENNIS COURTS TO COFFEE SHOPS A career in finance was Adrian Maizey’s backup plan. Now, however, he finds himself spearheading the turnaround of the Starbucks South Africa brand as its CFO and CEO. Adrian tells Caylynne Fourie how he rescued 13 stores and turned them into 55 successful outlets.
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hen Adrian Maizey was playing tennis and cricket at Pretoria Boys High, he dreamed about spending the rest of his life pursuing a career in sports.
At the age of 17, Adrian went to the United States embassy in Pretoria where the lady at the front desk, who also happened to be a childhood neighbour of his dad’s, gave him a list of American universities. “This was before the time of the internet when such lists were obtained in person,” he laughs. Three of the universities phoned him back and Adrian ended up choosing a scholarship to play tennis at the University of Nebraska. In 1993, at the age of 18, he took his first ever international flight with only R3,000 and one suitcase. “I came to the US and didn’t know anybody,” he says. “The first thing I did was go to the local store and buy a radio, because I didn’t have one growing up.” Adrian won the Tukkies (University of Pretoria) tennis championships in 1992, shortly after accepting the scholarship. When Adrian started his education at the University of Nebraska, it was mandatory that he take accounting. “I got an A plus while most of the others in the class found it challenging,” he says. Because he was good at it and found it interesting, Adrian decided to pursue an accounting degree. By that point, he had realised that a legitimate professional tennis career was not on the cards. Adrian got his first job at PwC and shortly after, joined Deloitte in Houston, Texas, where he qualified
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as a US chartered accountant. In 2001, he was accepted to Harvard Business School where he earned his MBA. This, Adrian explains, was a lifechanging moment. He entered the corporate world again with new ambition and worked his way up the ladder. After spending a total of 10 years at Deloitte, his Harvard credentials helped open dors for him in the investment world. He worked for four different investment firms over the next 19 years, which led to a personal investment in Taste Holdings. When Taste Holdings ran into financial difficulties in 2019, in an effort to save that investment with less than a month to spare, Adrian scrambled. Through his network in the US, Adrian raised money that ultimately led to his holding company, Rand Capital, acquiring the rights to Starbucks in South Africa through its Rand Capital Coffee subsidiary. The capital from the acquisition provided Taste Holdings with a necessary funding lifeline.
Getting to work Having inherited a mere 13 stores after five years under its previous owners, Adrian took it upon himself to turn the Starbucks South Africa brand around. Through the holding company, he appointed himself as the CEO, CFO and his own executive assistant, and set out plans to restructure the business model using economies of scale to deliver the international Starbucks experience to more South Africans.
