The Prepd Story

Prepd started with two people from very different kitchens.

The founder

Before Prepd, Shaun Wagner had already built a handful of brands across some very different niches — events, clothing, marketing tech, sales, content creation, with film school along the way. Food was the thread underneath all of it. Cooking in his family was never a task; it was the thing that brought everyone together.

A lot of that comes from his mom — one of the most organised people he's known, raising three sporty, always-moving sons and somehow always having meals ready. That's where Prepd started: build something that does for people what she did for them. Think ahead, so you don't have to.

The chef

Jon Evans grew up in Sonoma County, California, where a relaxed, community-focused lifestyle and great food go hand in hand. When love drew him to Cape Town, he brought that with him. Twenty years in kitchens, up the ranks to executive chef, and in 2025 he opened Cafe Sonoma in Roeland Square, Gardens — honest food, exceptional coffee, and a room you can stay a while in.

Shaun didn't hire him off a résumé. He met him over months of visiting the café, again and again, enjoying what he made — and eventually realised he was the answer to the question he'd been carrying: how do you find a chef who actually resonates with what you're building?

The model

Together they developed the menu that's the heart of Prepd — thirteen plates, more added every month. And here's the part people don't expect: Prepd doesn't run its own kitchen. The menu is something cafés around Cape Town can buy into, using it to fill their off-peak hours, cooking from ingredients we supply to standards we set, through a business portal we built. Sonoma is the first. Drivers collect the finished boxes straight from the kitchen and everything is tracked to your door.

It's a model built to grow outward into new suburbs while genuinely supporting the local cafés it partners with, not competing with them. The dream at the end of it is a flagship Prepd store — hopefully in Sea Point — a proper headquarters and cultural hub with run clubs and daily cafeteria-style meals.

Why

Because life has got busy, and being organised is the thing that makes eating well possible. Prepd wants to be your local cafeteria — the one genuinely taking care of you. You're not just prepped with meals. You're prepped in life.