Harpo: a brand with the flavor of music

Harpo. Harpo? That’s music. That’s what people who were young in the nineteen eighties would have said, if they moved in certain circles. DJ Harpo. A man. At first I thought ‘DJ’ were his initials. But ‘Harpo?’ What kind of name was that, I asked myself. It was much later that I learned of the Marx brothers and that they were not related to Karl.  The name stuck though.  DJ Harpo.  

My friends who loved music more than I did and knew much more than I would ever know, talked about him. Harpo, since then, was ‘all about music’. So much so that when the name came to be associated with pizza, I kind of told myself, ‘must be some other Harpo.’  In other words, I knew next to nothing of the man. 

Born on the 30th of May, 1961, he was named Lalith Clarence Gooneratne. No one calls him ‘Lalith,’ though. In fact Harpo says only his bank knows him as Lalith. He was ‘christened’ Harpo by his father when he was but a toddler because apparently his father had noticed that he resembled Harpo Marx. The name stuck. Long before it became a brand.  

A fourth generation Thomian, Harpo was heavily involved in extracurricular activities. He first stint as an entertainer had been in theatre, where he acted in inter-house plays alongside star schoolboy actors Richard De Zoysa and Chanaka Amaratunga, who went on to distinguish themselves in other fields later in life. He was a President’s Scout and also played rugby and Second XI cricket. He once mentioned that he regretted not having played in the Centenary Royal-Thomian encounter in 1979.  

Clearly passionate about a lot of things, Harpo insists that nothing inspires greater passion in him than people. The hospitality industry therefore seemed to have been made for him. After his OLs, Harpo joined the Claremont Hotel School where he claims he learned everything: ‘the full monty, from cleaning toilets, to scullery, store-keeping and everything to do with the industry.’ 

After completing his course in 1983, Harpo joined the Capri Club. That was the beginning. ‘There was never a dull moment. I was always firefighting with something or the other,’ he recalls and in fact this was how it was throughout his long career in the trade.   

Music of course was an early love, so to speak. Harpo had grown up listening to the Velona Hit Parade and the BBC Top 20. Deejaying he owes to Gabo (Gamini Peiris), the other name that young people in the eighties associated with music. 

‘It was a part time thing. I needed some cash. Gabo had equipment and hotels needed DJs.  I worked until 5 or 6 at the Capri and would head out to hotels south of Colombo and return the following morning. 

‘When I worked with Gabo I listened to a lot of songs. He flew around and picked up records. Back then, as you know, there were no CDs, no MP3s; it was strictly vinyl. Funk and jazz was what I most enjoyed but as a DJ one has to play anything that people wanted.’

He was and is people-fixated, one might say.  He made a name for himself even as he had fun doing stuff he loved. Gabo had the equipment but Harpo eventually put together all the equipment he needed such as mirror balls, bullet beams, helicopter lighting, smoke machines and everything else required for a mobile discotheque.

Few would know that Harpo did a stint in advertising, working as an Accounts Executive at Grey’s Advertising from 1984 to 1986. He handled the accounts of Upali and Kandos, Unic Radio, Delta Toffee and The Finance Company.

It was not his ‘thing’ in that he had a different kind of calling. He moved to Ramada Renaissance Hotel (later, Transasia Hotel) where he handled logistics and also worked as a music presenter at ‘The Library’.

After 10 years, Harpo was headhunted and recruited by Hilton as the Business Development Manager. 

‘Hilton International at the time planned to set up a Deli Market. I worked in the project office, focusing on setting up a businessmen’s club called “Windows on the World.” It never happened, though. I left in 1999 and joined Millennium Park (now Excel World) and helped set things up. 

Then one day, he got a call from Simon Barlow, the Vice President (Asia/Pacific) of Hilton, who wanted Harpo to work in China as a consultant on a project to revamp a restaurant on the China-Russia border. 

‘I worked for three months. This was around the time 9/11 happened. Then I did another stint in Japan, again for Hilton.’ 

While in Japan, he had got a call from Colombo and he returned to become the General Manager of Crescat.

‘All my life I had worked with corporates. After a few years at Crescat I decided it is time for me to move on and set up my own thing.  Hospitality was in my blood, so it had to be people-related. Of course it didn’t have to be related to food, but that’s the turn I took.’

In 2004 he set up Harpo’s Cafes and Restaurants. What he did was manage people’s headaches. The headaches of those who owned and/or ran restaurants. It was essentially a management company.  

‘The first was “The Commons.” At one point they decided to sell and offered me the right of refusal. I bought it in 2008/9.  He now has Bayleaf, the Park Street Mews Restaurant and Curve, a tapas bar next to it, the Colombo Fort Cafe in the Dutch Hospital restaurant complex and Commons at Hatch.’

Today people know ‘Harpo’s Pizza’. They know Harpo serves pizzas that are way better than those offered by the better known international brands. It was the first time a local player entered the pizza business. 

‘It’s home-made. I make my own sauces and pasta which you can now find in supermarkets,’ he said.

Having started at Bay Leaf, Harpo now has three pizza parlors, one in Nugegoda, another in Etul Kotte and a third in Ja Ela. Through these outlets and via Hot Wheels (his own delivery service) and Uber Eats, Harpo sells around a 1000 pizzas a month.  

It was of course not plain sailing from beginning to end. There were tough times. Harpo, mirroring in a way what could be called an inimitable Sri Lankan ethos, observes, ‘There was the 88-89 insurrection, the war and yet we still did discos, the entertainment industry still flourished for it was part of a lifestyle.’

‘Even today, just a few months after the deadly Easter Sunday attacks, from a tourism point of view, we kicked in much faster than did Bali after it suffered a terrorist attack,’ Harpo pointed out. We are, he insisted, ‘a resilient nation!’

Today, he leads a simple life. He travels a bit overseas, but clearly nothing gives him greater pleasure than delighting people.  

‘Coming to work is not coming to work.  I am a very hands-on manager and am always with my staff of around 200 people.’ 

The young man who took a bus from Hotel School to Aluthgama, was received by his electrician who took him in a push bicycle from hotel to hotel, so he could entertain people, is now 

Harpo. A brand. Another name for pizza in Colombo.  He’s also DJ Harpo. ‘Many still connect with me that way but now I am better known as a pizza person,’ he said.  Time passes. And time inevitably leaves traces of it passing. 

 

In 1961, fond parents named their new born child Lalith Clarence Gooneratne. No one remembers that name. At some point he was called ‘Harpo’. In time, he inscribed a melody on the name ‘Harpo’. Later still, he gave it a flavor. And through it all, certain things remained unchanged: a ready smile, a simple philosophy about keeping things simple, an absolute celebration of live and an unabated will to make people happy.  Attributes of a brand. A brand called ‘Harpo’.