South African small grocery businesses need to learn lessons, and so do legislators Informal retailing offood and drink accounts for some 54% of all township micro-enterprises and is a critical business activity for economically marginalised South Africans. Most significantly, spaza shops represent the dominant grocery trading business in the townships. There are over 140,000 of these micro-enterprises nationally, collectively trading over R42 billion worth of goods a year, according to 2016 figures from Neilson. Nevertheless, not much data is available on the economic impact and scale of such informal businesses, particularly with regards to the scope and scale of self-employment…
