For two days from noon until midnight, a patch of Muldersdrift veld on the edge of Joburg became the Luxurious Marble Circus. Guests dressed up in sequins and feathers, Champagne was poured, and aerialists, dancers, mimes, ringmasters and DJs performed alongside pyrotechnics.
This event is not about the understated. The Circus is built for people who want spectacle and impressive food and will pay for the privilege. It is also, increasingly, a statement about where the Marble Group is heading.
The 75,000m² setup at Ground The Venue was inspired by the group’s restaurant portfolio. Marble became the Grand Dining Room, the most formal space, with private tables, bar service and dining throughout the evening. Saint became the Royal Lounge, a more social space of cocktails, sharing plates and Sunday vibes. Zioux became the Imperial Terrace, a two-level elevated lounge with Asian-inspired food. And Pantry offered the Tasting Station in Playground in the Field, a casual open-air area with food stalls offering anything from oysters to soft serve.
Entry ranged from R990 for the Playground, which got you the main stage, the brand activations and most of the crowd, to a hefty R9,000 for a front-table lounge seat, which included a multi-course meal but not drinks. The closer you sat to the stage, the more you paid.
Key sponsor Investec got its clients first access to tickets and a 25% discount, and about 45% of all tickets were sold through that channel, says Dino Constantinou, one of Marble’s partners.
The main stage, 68m wide and 24m high, looked like something out of a Wes Anderson film and drew most of the attention. Behind it ran an operation that included 144 culinary staff a day under chef and Marble co-founder David Higgs, alongside 180 bar staff, 86 waiters, about 240 performers, 2,600 pyrotechnic cues and 8t of crockery and cutlery. More than 70 full-time staff across the partner businesses spent a year making the event happen.
Aiming high
When the group first proposed a festival priced like a special-occasion dinner, the response was blunt. “Initially, a lot of people told us we were crazy to try to charge these prices,” says Constantinou.
Constantinou worked in event production before Marble opened a decade ago, and the itch never left. Once Marble, Saint and Pantry were recognisable names, he began to wonder whether the brands could exist in a festival space. He sketched out a rough concept and approached event production specialist G&G The Goosebumps Company and its longtime branding partner, Grid Worldwide, and the idea of a festival centred on “luxurious fun” was born.
This year’s edition of the festival featured 26 branded spaces, including “worlds” created by Mercedes-Benz, Country Road, Investec, Samsung, Heineken, 947, Savanna, Johnnie Walker, Moët & Chandon, Hennessy, Don Julio and Schweppes. But it wasn’t about banners and billboards; the partners had to create playful, interactive experiences.
You could walk through the Savanna Dry District and buy a drink, step into the Country Road greenhouse and buy a limited-edition scarf, or settle in at the Johnnie Walker bar and try the Black Ruby whisky. The Wheel of Wonder ferris wheel and roaming performers added to the fairground feel. Everything was designed to invite selfies and social media engagement. Frankly, it was a masterclass in consumerism and branding.
Higgs says this is what sets the festival apart. “All our partners in this festival … whether it be any of the alcohol brands, beauty partners like Estée Lauder or this year’s fashion partner, Country Road … just align with our team and the installations go to the next level.”
The brands are not just bringing their own identities, he says. They are adapting to the event. “Everybody is 100% invested … and the customers and the guests … feel it.”
Attendance has climbed sharply. Last October’s edition drew 11,000 people over the weekend; this year more than 15,000 were on site over two days.
The first two editions made nothing for the organisers, with every rand going back into the brand. This year the festival was set to make a profit, but “not on the scale people imagine, because it costs a small fortune to put together”, says Constantinou. Ticket sales alone would not cover it. “We would be in a big red hole without our partners.”
The weather was another gamble. Insuring a two-day open-field festival in late September was, as Constantinou puts it, astronomical. “And we said … it’s just too much. We never took the insurance. And then for two weeks it looked like it was going to rain.”
It didn’t. Constantinou admits to performing a small daily ritual in the two weeks before the event: pushing a knife in the ground. It’s an old Greek folk remedy for keeping the rain away. The weather co-operated.
He is candid about the price. “It’s not for everyone, because R990 is relatively expensive,” he concedes. He measures the success of the event not in ticket sales but in how it makes people feel. “If people are spending this kind of money, they want to experience something really out of the ordinary. We’re taking people’s money, and they’re … really enjoying themselves. People are entertained for 12 hours in a way that doesn’t exist in the country. They don’t feel ripped off.” (A soft serve with a Flake that costs R35 at Pantry was R75 at the Circus.)
Does it fill the restaurants afterwards? “Frankly, our restaurants are already full,” Constantinou says, though he believes there is a lift. “It’s general awareness and we’re continuously building on the brand equity, pushing the envelope for hospitality in South Africa.”
New directions
In May the same partners launched the Magical Marble Family Fest, a family-orientated spin-off at James & Ethel Gray Park, with a Pantry-inspired tasting station, storybook stage and zones for toddlers through to teens.
What began in 2016 as a single Rosebank restaurant, led by David Higgs and Gary Kyriacou, has grown into a group spanning restaurants, retail (Pantry) and events (the Circus). It is now expanding into accommodation with a hotel. The group’s own description is telling: it’s becoming “much broader than restaurants”.
Pantry may be the most important of the three. It began during the pandemic as a high-end convenience store at a Rosebank petrol station and has become the group’s most scalable concept: part deli, part bakery, part café and part premium convenience store. Alongside the fresh meals and wine, you’ll find Lego sets and Korean beauty brands.
There are permanent stores in Rosebank, Bassonia and Fourways in Joburg and in Hazelwood, Pretoria. A 1,300m² standalone store next to Mall of Africa is planned for next year, at a cost of about R54m. The group has talked of reaching 10 Joburg locations before expanding into other regions and potentially as many as 30 stores nationally.
That is a very different business from a collection of destination restaurants, and the recent appointment of Greg Solomon as CEO of Pantry shows how seriously the group takes it. Solomon spent 15 years as head of McDonald’s South Africa, running more than 400 restaurants with over 15,000 employees.
His challenge is to bring scale and discipline without losing what makes Pantry distinctive. That means supply chains, training, standardisation and a central kitchen, but also careful choices about locations, products and people. Pantry has to be convenient enough to become habitual, yet distinctive enough to stand out from the supermarket groups moving into premium prepared food, especially on forecourts.
Then there is the hotel. Marble is partnering with developer Tricolt on a 32-room, five-star hotel at the R2bn-plus Olympus development in Sandton. It will occupy two floors beneath the penthouses in Tower 2, above a street-level Pantry and below the group’s restaurant on the 18th floor. The building is due for completion in mid-2028, with the hotel opening alongside it. Referred to as Maison Marble, it is intended to be the first in a series. A new restaurant, Jellyfish, will also join the portfolio, though details are being kept under wraps.
Cape Town is on the radar for the Circus, though expansion will depend on more than finding a venue. Whether other cities have enough people with this kind of disposable income is, Constantinou acknowledges, “a different story”.
Going offshore is not part of the plan. “We are South African. We’re here to stay.” Instead, he wants international visitors to come here, citing Belgium’s Tomorrowland as the model for an event that could draw crowds from elsewhere.
From a single Rosebank restaurant, Marble is building a business spanning dining, retail, entertainment and accommodation. The Circus shows it can put on a spectacle. The harder test is whether it can make the numbers work as the show gets bigger.
