On a buzzing evening at Cheese Louise in the heart of Hazelwood, Pretoria, we brought together a room full of independent business owners to share the real numbers behind their neighbourhood's remarkable growth, and hear from the people driving it. What followed was part data presentation, part honest conversation, and entirely inspiring.

Setting the scene: Gauteng's quiet superpower

To understand Hazelwood, you first have to understand where it sits. Gauteng isn't just South Africa's economic hub. If you disaggregated it from the rest of the country and ranked it alongside other African nations, it would be the third-largest economy on the continent, behind only Nigeria and Egypt. That's the stage Hazelwood is performing on.

Between 2022 and 2025, total transaction value processed by independent businesses across Gauteng grew by 58%, at a time when South Africa's GDP has hovered around 1.5–2% growth. As our VP of Brand Marketing Ann-Mari Höfinger told the room:

"While corporates have been sitting on cash reserves, scared to invest, not employing new people… quietly, independent businesses have been driving this economy forward. So that's all of you."

- Ann-Mari Höfinger, VP of Brand Marketing, Yoco

Pretoria: the city that outperforms the headlines

Joburg tends to grab the spotlight, but Pretoria has been doing something quietly exceptional. Yoco's data shows the city has consistently outperformed the Gauteng average for revenue per independent merchant, and between 2022 and 2025, total transaction value grew by 45%.

Crucially, average revenue per merchant held steady across that same period. That signals something more meaningful than new businesses joining the ecosystem: it means existing businesses are doing more, and doing it better.

And Hazelwood sits right at the heart of it.

The number that stopped the room

When we asked the audience to guess Hazelwood's total transaction value growth between 2022 and 2025, one brave voice called out 75%. A good number, but not even close.

This isn't just a story of more businesses joining the network. It's existing businesses in this neighbourhood scaling, deepening customer relationships, and generating dramatically more value than they were three years ago.

What's driving it? The spending mix tells the story

Hazelwood's transaction mix looks distinctly different from the rest of Gauteng, and that difference matters. Food and drink dominates at over half of all spending, but the second-biggest category is where things get really interesting.

In most of Gauteng, retail takes the second spot after food and drink. However, in Hazelwood, healthcare, beauty and fitness claims it at 25.7%. Retail comes in third at just 11.6%. People aren't coming here to run errands. They're coming to eat well, to be looked after, and to find something worth buying.

Food and drink spending is habit-based: your regular table, your morning coffee on the way to work. That loyal, predictable spend gives every business in the neighbourhood a reliable foundation. And when the restaurant draws foot traffic past the boutique, the boutique sits next to the spa, the spa next to the health practice.

Each business lifts the next one. That's the ripple effect in action.

When they come, they spend more

Transaction volume is only half the story. What really sets Hazelwood apart is how much customers spend here compared to the Gauteng average, across every single category:

That retail number deserves a pause. Retail is only 11% of Hazelwood's overall spending mix, but when someone walks into a retail business here, they're spending just under R1,040 on average. The customer coming through the door in Hazelwood isn't the average Gauteng shopper. They have disposable income, and they're prepared to use it.

A locally-rooted economy built to last

In parts of the Western Cape, international cards can make up 20–25% of total spend during peak tourist season. In Hazelwood, that figure sits below 7%. This isn't a gap, it's a quiet strength.

"You have local people who are really high income, who spend a lot of money in this area, and they are attracted by the offering that's been put together. That is such an exciting place for us to be."

- Ann-Mari Höfinger, VP of Brand Marketing, Yoco

When international visitors do come through, they spend around 73% more per transaction than local customers, a meaningful boost when it happens. But the bedrock is local community spending, which means steadier revenue and far greater resilience when the broader economy shifts.

What the evening told us

The data is clear: Hazelwood is growing in all the right ways: more transactions, higher spend per customer than anywhere else in the province, and a loyal local customer base that keeps showing up.

But numbers only go so far.

What the conversations in the room made tangible is that this growth isn't accidental. It's the result of business owners putting extraordinary care into what they build, being deliberate about community, and understanding that when one business grows, it lifts the businesses around it too.

The ripple effect is real. And Hazelwood is right at its centre.