Wayne Spray’s nearly 25-year-old company, Frozen Drinks Africa, was scaling up rapidly when Covid-19 hit. Suddenly, Cape Town, South Africa, where it is based, went into a hard lockdown. Theme parks, resorts and the seven other major sales channels where the company installed its machines were shuttered, and residents were only allowed to leave their homes for essential errands. The then-45-person company, founded in 1997 in Spray’s father’s garage, suddenly had nowhere to sell its Ice Blasts and Eskimo Joes.
