Veronica Kuipers
Managing director
Santa Fe Restaurant & Tequila Lounge
AFTER a difficult beginning to her business career, Veronica Kuipers has turned one of Perth’s first Mexican restaurants into an award-winning and iconic Subiaco business.
At the age of 24, an energetic Ms Kuipers bought the troubled business and, during the past 13 years has turned it into a restaurant that consistently achieves a substantially higher profit rate compared to the national average.
Having been instilled with a strong work ethic by her parents, who ran their own successful ice-cream business,
Ms Kuipers often put in 90-hour weeks, believing that Perth needed to experience the New Mexican South West American cuisine.
She is proud for having stuck it out in the tough hospitality industry, with one of her biggest measures of success hosting Lleyton Hewitt, Greg Norman, Patrick Rafter and Shane Warne at Santa Fe all in one week.
