Restaurants get their stars

THE Tourism Grading Council of South Africa this week introduced its grading scheme for the restaurant industry. Like other sectors of the tourism and hospitality industry that have undergone grading – accommodation and conference facilties – the restaurant scheme aims to use its stars as an indicator of the quality and types of restaurants available. In an interview with TNN, Salifou Siddo, executive director of the TGCSA, said the scheme has been a year in the making and his organisation has spent the last few months training over 100 assessors so that they could begin their work this month. The TGCSA is currently undertaking an awareness campaign amongst industry members and will officially launch the scheme once a certain number of restaurants have been graded. (Darren Sandras)