How Ocean Basket Is Transforming Talent Acquisition

From the Restaurant Floor to the C-Suite: How Ocean Basket Is Rethinking Talent Acquisition

In talent acquisition, the most effective strategies rarely start in boardrooms. They start where the work actually happens. For Stiaan Pienaar, Chief People Officer at Ocean Basket, that place is the restaurant floor.

In a conversation with Francois de Wet on Solving the People Puzzle, Stiaan shares how his unconventional journey, from payroll administrator to CPO by 32, shaped a talent acquisition approach built for the realities of South Africa’s restaurant industry. It’s practical, people-first, and deeply rooted in lived experience. The result? A system designed not just to hire faster, but to hire better, while uplifting people along the way.

Living the Business

When Stiaan says he “hates HR but loves people,” it’s not a provocation, it’s a principle. His career progression wasn’t fuelled by theory or frameworks, but by proximity. Time spent in stores, during peak service hours, alongside franchisees, managers, and frontline staff.

That closeness shaped his view of talent acquisition. You can’t design meaningful hiring processes without understanding the pressure, pace, and constraints of the environment.

In his words, “You have to live inside of your business.” Everything Ocean Basket has built since flows from that belief.

The Reality of Restaurant Hiring

The restaurant industry doesn’t slow down. Shifts start before sunrise and stretch late into the night. Roles are demanding, wages are tight, and turnover is high. With over 130 restaurants to staff, speed often becomes the default hiring strategy.

CVs are dropped at the door. Friends refer friends. Interviews happen quickly, sometimes out of desperation on both sides. Candidates oversell themselves because they need work. Managers hire whoever is available because the floor can’t wait. As Stiaan puts it, it’s “desperation meeting desperation.”

That approach keeps operations running, but it rarely leads to quality, progression, or long-term retention.

Defining “Good” 

Ocean Basket’s response was to start with clarity. Instead of vague expectations, the business defined exactly what “good” looks like for every role. These definitions, known internally as “the good recipe,” outline the skills, knowledge, and behaviours required to perform well.

Each person owns their recipe. They can see where they are strong, where they have gaps, and what development looks like. Through the OB Academy, employees can actively work toward the next role, gathering proof of readiness rather than waiting for an opportunity to appear.

Progression becomes visible and intentional. People are encouraged to move forward or move on, but not to remain stuck. The philosophy is simple: find good people, support them properly, and build toward greatness together.

The Catch: Turning Hiring Chaos into a Human System

Where the recipes define the standard, The Catch is the system that brings people into it, and it was built using Wamly, an all-in-one hiring system.

Stiaan explains it using a house analogy. Candidates enter at the front door in large numbers and move through practical spaces that mirror real hiring requirements. In the “living room,” they complete essentials like ID or work permit checks, banking verification, basic literacy and numeracy assessments, short psychometric inputs, and values alignment.

Those who meet the criteria move to the “patio,” where ready-to-hire candidates are matched with real, verified demand from franchisees. Hiring becomes intentional instead of rushed.

But the real impact happens behind another door. Candidates who aren’t ready yet aren’t rejected. Instead, they’re supported. Ocean Basket works with partners across Home Affairs, Education, Labour, banking institutions, and its own academy to help people close gaps. Missing documentation, banking access, or skills? They get help, free of charge, and are invited back when they’re ready.

The Catch doesn’t filter people out. It pulls them up.

Bigger Than One Brand

Importantly, this system isn’t designed to benefit Ocean Basket alone. Stiaan is clear that unemployment and poor hiring practices are industry-wide challenges. If someone completes their journey through The Catch and ends up working for another restaurant group, that’s still success.

A stronger talent pool benefits everyone.

After a soft launch supporting four new stores, the response exceeded expectations. Within a few weeks, more than 17,000 candidates had moved through the system. Stores were staffed from a bench of verified, recipe-aligned talent, and franchisees began to see the value almost immediately.

Partnerships are now forming with youth-focused organisations to support candidates from early development through to job readiness, creating a pipeline that starts earlier and supports people more intentionally.

What People Leaders Can Take Away

Stiaan’s message to HR and people leaders is direct: don’t try to sanitise the mess before you understand it. Go to the sites. Sit in the heat. Work a Saturday rush. Let the reality challenge your assumptions.

Talent strategies built at a distance miss the friction points that matter most. Proximity isn’t optional; it’s the job.

As he puts it, “Build within the mess. Live the business.”

A Blueprint for Impactful Talent Acquisition

At its core, this isn’t a story about a tool or a framework. It’s about operational empathy turned into repeatable systems. It’s about defining “good” clearly, supporting people who aren’t there yet, and building pathways that create dignity, mobility, and opportunity.

For a country facing deep employment challenges, that matters. For a business operating at scale, it’s also a smart strategy. Better hiring leads to stronger teams, better customer experiences, and brands that hold up where it counts, on the floor and at the table.

The Path Forward

Talent acquisition doesn’t have to choose between speed and humanity. Ocean Basket’s approach shows what’s possible when you design for both. Meet people where they are. Give them a way forward. And build systems that respect the reality of work, not just the theory of it.

For Stiaan, that balance comes from living the business, defining what “good” looks like, and using the right tools to turn chaos into clarity. By running The Catch on Wamly, Ocean Basket was able to take a complex, high-volume hiring challenge and turn it into a structured, people-first system, one that supports candidates who are ready and uplifts those who are not yet.

At Wamly, we believe that the right tools can turn hiring from a headache into a competitive advantage. Whether you’re looking to streamline your talent acquisition or build a more human-centric team, we’re here to help.

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Listen to the full conversation on Solving the People Puzzle to hear Stiaan’s insights in his own words:

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Better teams start with better hiring and better hiring starts with Wamly. Contact the Wamly team today!