ABOUT US

Jack’s is the creation of David Newark and Laura Brown – we are both British and from
South East London.

This the story so far…….
The mid 1990’s saw us successfully climbing our respective corporate ladders in the UK but we always felt something was lacking. We took a year out and worked in a game fishing club south of Mombasa in Kenya and it was there that the African ‘bug’ bit. Returning to the UK, our house and our jobs we soon made the decision we had to somehow get back to Africa.
A friend then working in Durban let David know of a job opening in Johannesburg and off he went, I followed a few months later.
Still in the corporate world but with an immeasurably better quality of life we travelled extensively all over Southern Africa in those first 12 months and soon made the decision that we were home.
The mid 2000’s saw a major change in our thinking – not getting any younger and knowing that we had years of corporate training and experience behind us, we decided to go it alone, bought a piece of land and built Jack’s.
We opened the doors of the restaurant in December 2008 with a building only partially finished due to a shark like ex-project manager who misappropriated some money AND the ever rising cost of materials (the infrastructure for the 2010 Football World Cup was being built and the cost of raw materials was sky rocketing monthly) so we ran out of money.
We learnt quickly as the first few years passed and managed to push the building forward to completion little by little.

In August 2019 we decided to change the name of the B&B to Jack’s Seaview Inn to better indicate to our guests exactly what we offer here (which we think is so much more than the average B&B): an all day restaurant, a fully licensed bar plus a variety of accommodation to suit various needs….
Regarding the rooms – that has been a journey all of its own: Late 2012 saw the opening of the first B&B room, mid 2017 the second room was launched, the third followed at the end of 2018. The plan was to open the final room in winter 2019 but Betty’s Bay suffered immeasurable damage to our community in January 2019 when a fire raged for 11 days.
This put the room opening on hold for 12 months but we were hopeful for 2020 and of course early in 2020 we had lockdown due to COVID19.
Room Four finally opened to much private fanfare in December 2021- the B&B was finished!

We still have much to achieve but we both agree that we would not have wanted the roller coaster ride to have been any other way…. and so it continues to the next chapter.