From humble beginnings in the 1960’s, the Steers brand has evolved from a small number of steak houses to become South Africa’s leading fast food franchise. Today Steers enjoys the status of a multinational brand and is a key player in the South African fast food market with outlets throughout Africa. With more than 290 restaurants in operation, Steers is renowned as South Africa’s leading fast food burger franchise.

Steers together with Debonairs, Fishaways and Blockbuster Video, is part of the Steers Holdings stable of brands, which is currently the most prominent and widespread franchised fast food company in Africa.

(Left and Right) Steers Holdings canteen, offering staff a variety of meals from Debonairs, Steers, Fish Aways and Church's Chicken

A little bit about the man behind the scenes before we take a walk through the bakery. William Kleyweg, the Bakery Manager worked in the bakery industry all his life. He has worked in and managed family owned bakeries, plant bakeries and has served as Technical Advisor to bakeries and confectioneries for a major flour mill.

Having visited several bread plant bakeries, this was to be my first to a roll plant and although I had some idea of what to expect, I was astounded at the sophistication of the equipment that was used. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but one look at the recently acquired Koenig Roll Moulder and the ease at which the rolls are produced eradicated all of my previous notions of people standing around a table rolling manually weighed portions of dough into little balls and placing them onto baking racks.

Freshly baked rolls being placed on racks to be cooled

All that is needed to be done with the Koenig Roll Moulder is tip the mixed dough into the inlet and presto, at the other end one sees the already weighed 60 gram rolls beaming through, four at time and with a production capacity of 6 000 rolls per hour, just one of these moulders is sufficient to cater for the 45 000 dozen rolls per week production of the bakery. This includes the King Steer hamburger roll, Rave roll and Hero roll. That is how many rolls are required by the more than 220 Steers, Fishaways and Churches Chicken stores in Gauteng.

The Koenig Roll Moulder

From the moulder the rolls are placed onto baking racks, racks placed into trolleys, sesame seeds sprinkled on, into the proofer, the oven and left to cool. All rolls are then flow wrapped into threes, ready for distribution.

In addition the bakery produces between 3500 and 4000 subs and 500 loaves of bread per day. Each loaf of bread weighing 1,275 kilograms, is 140 millimetres wide, 110 millimetres high and 400 millimetres in lenghth. Very nearly two standard loaves placed in a row. The bread is purposefully sliced into 10mm slices for sandwiches, before distribution. Slicing is effected by two Kuhn Bread Slicing Machines. Like with all quality aspects of Steers Holdings, rotation of stock is extremely important and whilst the rolls have a shelf life of four to five days, stores are prompted to place their orders timeously so that they receive only those rolls that were baked within the last twenty-four hours. Deliveries take place on a daily basis and is effected by 2,5 tonne Toyota Dynas.

The 1,275 kg loaves of bread being taken out of the oven

From what I have seen in their bakery alone is no wonder that the Steers Credo is “Making food that is always good and which always pleases you, our customer. Is more important to us than anything else. Its our obsession. We use nothing but the freshest ingredients. We are intent on consistently giving of our best. We believe you deserve that. And we understand that you expect nothing less.”