March’s midday sun warms the entrance to Donkey Long Tong’s three-story establishment. To the left, a beautifully restored Series 1 Land Rover takes centre stage in a campsite set against the backdrop of the Richtersveld. To the right, Jack Parow and Francois Van Coke’s golden tongs flash a message in the early Autumn sunlight. Heeltyd Speeltyd.
Co-founder Marcel Hattingh is in the throes of the origin story of the now well-known Cape Town braai accessory brand, when he notices my eyes cast upwards at a two-meter pair of tongs on the wall. ‘You know we say the more you braai, the longer it gets, and with those ones you can braai into the future. You can braai tomorrow’s meat today,’ he says, laughing.
Donkey Long Tong began as a joke among three friends – husband and wife, Marcel and Simóne Hattingh, and Nic Eve – who spent a lot of their spare time around fires, on the road in their Land Rovers, and in the outdoors. The story goes that Simóne burnt her fingers on a Weber in Greenpoint, Circa 2017. A long tong was propositioned. Then a doos long tong. The joke evolved to the point that Marcel, three years later, drew up a design, employed the services of a laser cutter and crafted the first ever ‘DLT’. When the jokes came about the long tong at the next fire, he fetched it and, branding a nearly meter-long pair of tongs said, “You mean this?”
For about six months, they braaied with this oversized tong purely as a joke – braaing backwards with tongs over the shoulders, standing a meter away and stoking a small Weber fire – never considering that it might become a product.
During a camping trip to Namibia in July 2021, everything changed.
For the first time, they were braaiing over ground fires and large fire pits, standing upright instead of crouching next to a pit, and the long tong started to make perfect sense. “We realised for the first time just how strong this thing was”, said Marcel. He pointed to the Landy at the other side of the shop, “If you drive with that in town, it’s not the best car, but if you go into the bush, then it shines. That’s where the Long Tong shone.” Around campsites, strangers began asking where they had bought it. The answer, of course, was nowhere – it didn’t exist as a product.
Marcel is building to the climax of the story when Nic walks out from the workshop to finish it off. He introduces himself and launches immediately into a story that has been told a thousand times over, with the passion of someone explaining it for the first time.
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Racing to make it into the Richtersveld National Park before the gates closed at sunset, the trio hit full throttle on the mountain roads. ‘Marcel and I are drifting around these corners, the cars are going sideways, and we’re like, there’s no way we’re sleeping outside the park tonight. Then, as we turn a corner, we see a donkey cart in the road, the riders frantically waving for us to slow down,’ Nic explains. The road ahead had been washed away entirely, dropping off into a sheer fall. Had they not slowed down, the trip could have ended very differently.
That night, camping on the Orange River with no signal and no distractions, they made a decision around the fire: they would make 300 of the long tongs and see if anyone actually bought them.
Their workshop is now pushing out 300 sets of tongs a day, and they have achieved legendary status in South African braai circles in under five years. Donkey Long Tong has manufactured bespoke accessories for brands like Windhoek, they ship worldwide and have extended the product range to include an 80 and a 69 centimetre tong, a blower and paddle for the fire, and a jack sack containing the full Donkey range. Their products are stocked at 200+ stores across South Africa, with a handful of remaining stockists in Namibia, Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom and Australia.
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But the masterful combination of white oak, stainless steel and brass rivets, which has grown the brand to such prominence, began development with a drawing in the sand and later an Airbnb table as a workshop.
“We started thinking about a name and decided on DLT as an inside joke. Then we started talking about the donkey we saw on the road,” Nic continued. “ We liked the idea of the donkey as a symbol: reliable, hardworking, humble. The tong is a complementary product to the fire – the fire is the hero, and the tong is just always there when you need it, like a donkey.”
‘From the moment we said it, we couldn’t stop saying it. We knew immediately that was the name,’ added Marcel.
The logo came the next day. Instead of using a picture of a donkey’s head or body as most brands would, they noticed animal prints and vehicle tracks in the sand. Tracks, they realised, are the mark of adventure – you can’t leave tracks unless you’ve been on the journey. They decided the donkey hoof would become the brand logo.
Back in Cape Town, they ordered the first batch of laser-cut parts and built a very simple website. The homepage was just a white page with a life-size image of the tong and a “Buy Now” button. They didn’t even have stock when they started by taking pre-orders.
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They did no advertising. Everything was organic on Instagram and through word of mouth. Within minutes of launching, their second customer was Springbok rugby player Frans Malherbe. ‘Who knows how Frans Malherbe found out about us, but he bought two while on tour and was like don’t send this to my house, I’m not there,’ says Marcel, laughing.
The early days were chaotic. Parts didn’t fit together properly, components had to be sanded and adjusted by hand, and the founders assembled, cleaned and packed products themselves, often working through the night. At one point, their ‘factory’ was simply the kitchen counter of the Airbnb where Marcel and Simóne were living.
Eventually, after leaving their day jobs, the team moved into a small storage unit in Cape Town with big barn doors and high ceilings, which they cleaned and converted into a workshop themselves. From there, the business began to grow rapidly.
The first Christmas, they sold around 300 tongs. The next year, it was 4,000. The following year, it was 20,000.
Donkey Long Tong has grown into an incredibly well-known Cape Town outdoor and braai brand in a relatively short period of time, and it is obvious that so much of this success stems from the enthusiasm behind their product and an uncompromising principle of fun. ‘We don’t have KPIs, we have Kak Praat Indexes’, said Marcel and Nic, on separate occasions. The philosophy around quality also remains the same. They only sell their own products and have deliberately avoided becoming a general outdoor retailer. There is craftsmanship and care, from manufacturing to packaging. They use the best materials, the strongest designs, and add a personal touch to every product shipped, through the wrapping and delivery process.
Ironically, running Donkey Long Tong as a business means the team has less time for what inspired the brand in the first place – three friends’ shared love for road trips, camping and adventure. But, as they see it, they are helping other people get outdoors, light fires, travel and create their own stories. And that’s what the brand has ultimately always been about: a product grounded in the belief of the power of a campfire and good conversation.
From a joke at a braai to a brand born on the banks of the Orange River, Donkey Long Tong continues to innovate and impress in an industry entwined in the cultural fabric of South Africa. They do so smiling, tongue in cheek, and with great care for the stories and adventures that their products may accompany.
Images: Supplied
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