“My father worked as both a Chef and a Waiter at Nwanedi Game Reserve. I often visited him,
watching him prepare food, moving between the kitchen and dining tables sparked my own love for
cooking and set me on the path to becoming a Chef,” says Tendani Ramavhuya.
His path wasn’t a straight line from kitchen to retail. After graduating as a Chef at Founders Hotel
school, he cut his teeth in various restaurants across South Africa. The idea of making sauces hit him
hard in 2005 during his first hotel job at Discover Game Reserve.
Tendani honed his craft internationally- working in Dubai and later California- before returning home
to high-profile roles at the Emperor’s Palace and the Intercontinental Hotel at OR Tambo
International Airport.
While working with SAPS in 2018, he opened a restaurant in Tembisa, started cooking, supplying and
marketing his sauces to retail stores around Johannesburg. The restaurant was a testing ground.
He’d seen how the best in the world did it, now he wanted to bring that standard home.
In 2024, he took a role of Food & Beverages manager at Premier Hotel Thohoyandou. The move
brought him back to Limpopo, to Shayandima. That’s when he officially relaunched Rams Food
Supply & Manufacturing.
The breakthrough came when Roots Butchery at Thavhani Mall became the first retailer to stock
Rams sauces.
Rams sauce now comes in seven flavors: Hot peri peri, mild, lemon & herb, sweet chili, garlic &
mushrooms, basting & barbecue and cheese sauce.
And he’s not stopping at sauces. Rams Frozen Chicken-organic-and Frozen Chips are next on the line.
Local artist, Murida Khakhathi & Friends is the brand ambassador, helping push Rams sauce into the
community spotlight.
Tendani puts it plainly “Every Chef has a weapon, mine is preparing the best sauce, and there’s no
match.”
That’s not arrogance. It’s conviction built from years in some of the toughest kitchens in the world.
For Tendani, sauce is not just a condiment. It’s his signature. The thing he does better than anyone
else in the room, that he can control, perfect and put his name on.
In a market crowded with imported sauces and generic flavors, he’s betting that a Chef’s weapon-
made local, made real- still wins.