Mulanje Pizza restaurant not closing at Chitakale but aiming to diversify by relocating elsewhere

* I want to bring Mulanje Pizza into a strong public brand because we prepare the best pizza using the most traditional way of wood fire, which is unmatched

* At the same time, like we indicated earlier that though pizza is our primary product, we also serve a fully-flagged menu

* And we also manage a Cultural Museum and Art Gallery, which depict our culture and falling under our motto of the ‘Warm Heart of Africa’

By Duncan Mlanjira

Passionate customers of Mulanje Pizza seemed to have been disenchanted to learn that the restaurant’s management plans to relocate elsewhere — thinking it means closing shop for the Chitakale restaurant.

Owner of the hospitality facility, Willard Mahata said he is getting a lot of enquires about his intention to consider to Limbe or Blantyre as contained in an article published by Maravi Express on November 11.

“People think I am closing Mulanje Pizza restaurant here at Chitakale after reading that article, thinking that I want to head for the big cities,” he said. “Of course not. I want to assure our valued customers that I am not intending to close the Chitakale restaurant but I would like to diversify.

“I want to bring Mulanje Pizza into a strong public brand because we prepare the best pizza using the most traditional way of wood fire, which is unmatched.

“At the same time, like we indicated in the last article that though pizza is our primary product, we also serve a fully-flagged menu and we also manage a Cultural Museum and Art Gallery, which depict our culture and falling under our motto of the ‘Warm Heart of Africa’ — specifically for tourists both foreign and local.”

Mahata had earlier explained that the CoVID-19 pandemic, Cyclone Freddy, low tourism business and current financial crisis that has affected the entire country, have hard hit Mulanje Pizza restaurant business and to sustain it, maybe relocating elsewhere would help.

The hospitality facility was thriving prior to CoVID-19 through the clientele of foreign tourists from Europe as well as domestic customers who come from Limbe, Blantyre, Lilongwe and even Mzuzu.

He indicated that he can’t afford the expensive rentals in the two towns of Limbe or Blantyre and was asking well-wishers to donate rental space for him to operate from to cater for customers in these areas, who sometimes find themselves in Mulanje and patronise the restaurant to savour the “mouth-watering Mulanje Pizza”.

“That way, customers from Limbe or Blantyre will save time, fuel and money and at the same time, we market the product in new customers, who would stop over at Chitakale once they found themselves in Mulanje.”

Mahata maintains that though their main clientele are foreign tourists, they also cater for local tourists, mostly those they served before and loved their pizza, which he guarantees as the best.

Mahata joined the hospitality industry in 1975 in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) where he got his first diploma from Bulawayo Technical College and went on to attain a degree in 2007 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

He worked in various hotels within Malawi and outside rising into different managerial positions up to the level of a general manager and in August 2018, he found a gap in the pizza business at Chitakale in Mulanje.

He inherited the facility, formerly named Mulanje Pepper Pizza at Chitakale, which had been closed for eight months and renamed it Mulanje Pizza, which started very well since it already had clientele — tourists from Europe and even local tourists.

“From 2021, when the country was hit hard by CoVID-19, we lost a lot of customers and due to that, business came to a standstill because people were not traveling at all,” he explained in the earlier interview.

“Thus we decided to beef up the pizza restaurant and opened up the Cultural Museum and Art Gallery, which also caters for primary and secondary school pupils to appreciate the culture of our ancestors’ livelihood and also us as makolo adzana (recent parent generation) who lived in Namulukunuwa (round hut) where life was very simple and straight forward.”

Mulanje Pizza is located at the lovely roundabout at Chitakale, the junction to Phalombe where tourists hike up the magnificent Mulanje Mountain the Likhubula Lodge.

Highlights of Mulanje district as a tourism destination include hiking up the 3rd largest mountain in Africa, the challenging annual Porters Race up the mountain, tea plantations whose beautiful view is all the way to Muloza (the border with Mozambique) and the sweet pineapples and bananas grown there.

Mulanje Pizza adds to all the service that a tourist — foreign or local — may need and its local visitors have also been plenty. They have pizza recipes labeled as Dr. Ben, Dr Rolland, named after doctors based at Mulanje Mission Hospital, who initiated the recipes.

They also have a label, Che Nyirenda, named after Super League Association of Malawi (SULOM), Chimwemwe Nyirenda, who is a strong advocate of local tourism through his initiative, Bon Voyage Club.

Bon Voyage Club was formed in December 1998 with the aim of promoting local tourism in Malawi and facilitates for group travels to various tourist destinations — enhancing the tourism industry’s motto of ‘Tidziyamba Ndife aMalawi’.

Mahata paid tribute to Nyirenda’s constant patronage and for his vegetarian pizza recipe and to Dr. Ben now in Australia, who keeps visiting them and he is the reason he wants to keep the Mulanje Pizza legacy going.