FOR years, the warm glow of Coobah’s signage lit up a corner of Preller Walk Shopping Centre in an upmarket Bloemfontein suburb, drawing in families, students and late-afternoon regulars who treated its bustling tables as a second home.
Then, almost without warning, the restaurant fell silent.
The chairs were stacked, the lights dimmed and the signature aroma that once seeped through the shopping centre vanished.
What most shoppers did not realise was that although the Coobah brand had continued operating under new management for some time, the original corporate entity behind it – Coobah Development CC – was quietly sliding toward its own demise.
Eight years after the handover and five years after Coobah Development CC was deregistered, the legal tail of that closure finally snapped shut.
On 3 October 2025, the Free State High Court handed down a judgment ordering three former members of Coobah Development CC to pay more than R956 000 to the Paul Kalil Trust, the landlord that had leased the premises to the restaurant.
Despite the restaurant’s operational handover in 2017 and its eventual shutdown sometime before its deregistration in 2020, the court found that the original lease had never been cancelled – and remained in force until its expiry.
Coobah was trading from Shop 9 at Preller Walk under lease agreement signed in 2015.
In June 2017, the members of Coobah Development CC sold the restaurant business to BT Service Providers (Pty) Ltd, which immediately took occupation and continued using the Coobah name.
From the outside, the transition seemed effortless.
The new operators paid rent directly to the landlord’s managing agents and ran the restaurant as before.
The landlord accepted these payments from June 2017 until at least June 2019, showing no objection to the change in operators.
But behind the scenes, a crucial detail had been overlooked: the original lease was never cancelled in writing, as required by the contract.
The trust declined to sign a new lease with BT Service Providers because it was dissatisfied with the sureties offered.
As a result, even though BT ran the restaurant for at least two years, the original tenant, Coobah Development CC, remained legally bound.
The court noted that Coobah Development CC was deregistered on 1 September 2020, one day after the lease period ended.
Ironically, this meant the landlord ultimately demanded rental for a period during which BT was no longer operating the restaurant, yet the original lease still had legal life.
In her judgment, Judge Celeste Reinders found that no tacit termination of the 2015 lease had taken place.
She ruled that the trust’s acceptance of rent from BT did not create a new lease and also did not amount to cancellation of the old one.
According to the judge, BT never became the contractual tenant, meaning the original members remained liable until the lease expired.
Accordingly, the court ordered former Coobah Development CC members – Panno Joannides, Suzette Robberts and Niel Cronje, the latter being executor of the late Johannes Cronje’s estate – to pay R829 122.14 in rental arrears and R127 617.80 to restore the premises to a “white-box” condition.
They were also ordered to pay interest at the prescribed rate, as well as the legal costs.
The court dismissed all alternative claims against BT Service Providers and its director, Raymond Chiimba, because no lease ever existed between them and the trust.
Today, the storefront at Shop 9 is simply another space in a busy centre – its past life as a neighbourhood favourite largely forgotten by passers-by.
But for the former members of Coobah Development CC, the end of Coobah’s story has not been measured in meals served or memories made, but in lease clauses, arrears calculations and a court judgment delivered long after the kitchen went cold.