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Case Studies

Business Restructuring, Strategic Growth Acceleration & Profitability

Scope of Work

  • Merging operations of the acquired entities into a unified mechanism
  • Creating & implementing SOP’s across the business
  • Manpower management, selection, training & development
  • Development of performance metrics, monitoring & enhancement
  • Revenue focus, setting targets, developing revenue enhancement methodologies
  • Marketing partnerships, campaigns planning, implementation & measurement
  • Continuous audits across the business, financial planning & supervision
  • Growth strategy, business development and expansion planning
  • Menu revamp & enhancement, recipes development, standardization procedures
  • Setting up & supervising the Central purchase & production unit
  • Establishing an in-house CRM, Call Centre & Fullfilment Unit
  • Ensuring superior customer experience & ongoing improvements with enhanced engagement

Challenges

  • Manpower mindset overhaul towards working as one
  • Cross training team members for different functions, adaptability & agility
  • Establishing a customer-centric culture
  • Inculcating innate values of strong organizational culture amongst team members
  • Retaining old & lost customers while winning new ones & converting loyalty
  • Menu revamp process implementation across all outlets & maintaining standards
  • Setting system-wide SOP’s and monitoring compliance
  • Brand re-invigoration & resurgence; Re-modeling old guard thinking

Approach

The Critical Part

  • Merging operations, companies, values & people are much more difficult than just acquiring a business
  • It was this most critical aspect of the post-acquisition process that had to be executed to seamless perfection
  • The exercise was done by bringing many outlets, their teams, recipes, processes, branding, uniforms, personality, attitudes, service levels, technology, SOP’s and culture under one brand, one company
  • The journey was a long one, which transcended over many months and rolled over into an on-going process till the borders diminished & virtually became invisible
  • The spirit achieved was neither Ours or Yours, it was all about US

The Fun Part

  • With the house coming under some sense of order, it was time to get into the best part : menu revamp or shall we say, a new menu identity
  • With such a known legacy brand and having served multiple customers over the years, it was indeed a challenging & exciting process eliminating dishes while trying to add new ones
  • Many detailed data analysis, customer reviews, personal checks later, the list of dishes making the cut was finalized
  • Detailed recipe tests & trials, formulations, ingredient selections, sauces & bases preparations were done to ensure each recipe came out sharper & richer
  • Professional photo-shoots were organized thus giving new & real images to the dishes on the menu
  • A full introduction of the menu was done with the BOH teams with rigorous training for each member to standardize the recipes across all outlets
  • The FOH teams were trained as well on all recipes, their descriptions, selling points, ingredients, up-selling tactics, customer experiences to represent the menu & the brand perfectly well
  • A full manual was prepared for all team members at all outlets including the CRM & Call Centre teams to ensure familiarity & knowledge sharing amongst everyone
  • The CPU (Central Production Unit) was developed to create & distribute the main sauces and bases to all the outlets on a daily basis to maintain consistency, freshness and standardization of all recipes
  • A fully integrated in-house CRM & Call Centre was set-up to manage customer experiences, enhance customer engagement, maintain uniformity of communication with everyone as also supervise & manage overall delivery logistics for the entire business

The Important Part

  • Operations merged, new menu done, CRM & Call Centre implemented, teams trained, branding unified, marketing partnerships & campaigns underway, it now came down to managing overall operations
  • This phase involved a huge surge in marketing, supervising each outlet’s operations, team management, delivery logistics upscaling to meet demand, FOH & BOH re-trainings & capacity building, customer handling & engagement enhancements and keeping a pulse on everything, everyday
  • New promotions, marketing ideas, technology integrations, branded online ordering website & app development, learning from customer reviews, peer benchmarking, all led the brand towards a greater earning and doubling of revenues in the months to follow
  • The brand saw a resurgence in the market & industry as a force to reckon with, winning awards along the way and new customers increasing their loyalty thereby turning the business profitable and with a clear focus on expansion via opening of new outlets

Learnings

  • A lot of financial structuring & re-structuring
  • Scaling up of business activities based on capacity & capability utilizations
  • Cost focused approach while growing revenues & profitability

Awards & Recognition

Awarded as the “Best Chinese Cuisine” by the MEA Markets UAE Business Awards for three years in a row : 2017, 2018 and 2019

Categories
Case Studies

Brand Incubation, Concept Development, Operations Management & Strategic Growth

Scope of Work

  • Market research to study, evaluate & understand cuisine trends, café formats, competitive landscape, customer spends, design elements, manpower & customer experiences
  • Conceptualise, create & develop a unique gourmet café
  • Create a distinguishable, gourmet styled comfort food menu
  • Create high quality beverages based on coffee, tea and healthy & fresh ingredients
  • Recruit, train & manage skilled team members
  • Project management, SOP’s, logistics & overall management of the business

Challenges

  • Location hunt
  • Design build
  • Menu development
  • Team building
  • Pre-opening SOP’s, training, trials & soft-runs
  • Post-opening customer experience management
  • Post-opening team re-training & management

Approach

The Fun Part

What started out as a location hunting exercise led to the most enriching experience of developing a high-end gourmet café, building it through all parameters, running the business and going on to win awards too.

An enviable location in a brand-new development with a large corner frontage & outdoor seating set the stage for a highly distinguished concept creation.

Thinking & working on the concept idea delved our brains into making it a high-end gourmet, all-day dining café with great comfort food from across the globe and organic teas, coffees and healthy blends to add to the offering.

Designing the space as an open kitchen format with a large indoor & outdoor dining area, having loads of sun shine through the outlet’s floor to ceiling glass façade turned out to be one of the most exciting planning exercises undertaken.

The Important Part

The macro to micro exercise was easier said than done. This involved a lot of thinking & planning and re-thinking & re-planning multiple times over till the best desired outcomes were developed.

Brand naming kicked off the entire vision for the concept leading to a superb menu development exercise coupled with a highly energetic & interesting space design for the outlet.

Developing the right team with skill sets & personality matches was the next big task. This was accomplished via careful selection of members based more on their personality & attitude attributes with a great deal of training provided to hone their skills to exude a higher level of vibe & confidence suiting the concept attitude & panache.

Many days, weeks & a few months later, the outlet was raring to go. Alongside the build, menu development & trials, team training, supplier’s selection and creation of standard operating procedures, a carefully thought out marketing program was also put into place.

The concept was soft-launched and followed through with a mega launch two months later thus giving birth & establishing the newest & finest gourmet café in town.

The Critical Part

As if building the concept, the menu, the team and conducting all pre-opening trials weren’t enough, the worst and the best was yet to come, exactly in the same order.

We opened doors one fine evening, guests came strolling in immediately thereon, orders started to flow, the kitchen began to hustle, the servers started handling their sections and so the evening went well.

What ensued over the next couple of weeks was completely the unexpected: guests poured & poured & poured and we could not cope & cope & cope. We had trained hard, prepared ourselves for all the hard work but we couldn’t match up. Such was the opening euphoria.

Back to Basics

Re-drawing the entire work-flow, menu re-orientation, team re-training was immediately put on the front lines with the utmost emphasis given to team morale and customer experience.

Day by day, shift by shift, member by member, dish by dish, we tolled yet again, perfecting each element again and again, to the degree where it began to feel like clock-work and a well-oiled team-managed machine.

The Re-Opening

Whilst we never closed during the re-orientation phase, we were conscious that we needed to send out a new message to all our customers who supported us during the difficult period and to thank our supplier partners along-with letting the town know that we were ready, yet-again.

A carefully planned out formal launch party was executed to great success, showcasing the venue, its cuisine, the awesome team and the panache that the concept had created.

Success is Sweet

Days, weeks, months and many happy customers later, the venue was nominated amongst the best in the category and went onto win a prestigious award.

The next couple of months saw a few more award categories flowing the venue’s way: We knew now that the concept was a huge success !!

Learnings

  • How much ever one may work hard during the pre-opening days, you are never ready or prepared till you serve the first customer
  • The saying “Devil is in the Detail” is so true but one only realizes it after going through it
  • Operations is not for the faint hearted
  • Building a menu is easier than building a team
  • Stay ahead of the curve, always

Awards & Recognition

Favourite Cafe Dubai by What’s On Dubai

Two Hat Exceptional Rating by What’s On Dubai

Best Breakfast by Zomato Dubai

Nominated for Restaurant Team of the Year by Caterer Awards Dubai

Categories
Case Studies

Multi-brand Concept’s Development, Management & Growth

Scope of Work

  • Launch of a large, high-end, licensed lounge & Thai fusion restaurant
  • Launch of a Japanese Sushi & Teppanyaki concept restaurant
  • Concept development, concept build, launch & management of cafes
  • Overall operations management, team building and performance management
  • Marketing campaigns, customer & partner relationships management

Challenges

  • Learning & re-learning F&B from a Dubai perspective
  • Understanding to work with multi-national, multi-cultural team members
  • Adapting to a new-world & international working methodology
  • Making in-roads and establishing relationships in a new environment

Approach

The Critical Part

It was the first professional experience in an international environment in Dubai and learning the ropes of working with a cross section of different nationalities as team members as also customers.

One had to quickly adopt & adapt in doing the following within a very short time-frame :

  • Immerse into understanding all operations
  • Involve & engage with all team members to understand them, their profiles, their personalities, capabilities and draw up individual job roles
  • Understand individual concepts for development, launch, recruitment, training, marketing, finance, menu’s and target customers
  • Preparing schedules for each concept for further implementation of all key tasks and seeing them through

Launch of an iconic, large, licensed venue comprising a very stylish lounge & dining area focused on a Thai fusion theme & menu.

  • This venue created multiple benchmarks for many an outlet to imbibe, copy & follow in Dubai
  • The venue had customers queueing up in its days of prime & glory

Launch of a contemporary Sushi & Teppanyaki concept restaurant establishing a cuisine frontier with its menu.

Launch of diverse café concepts across town.

Establishing relationships with suppliers, partners, media, marketing agencies & internal associations.

The Important Part

With the launch of different venues, styles, concepts & managing diverse teams, it was extremely important to stay involved in day-to-day operations.

Getting your hands dirty is the best way to lead and there was no other way it could be done.

With such commitment & focus, the overall operations across all venues were managed with a clear direction on the following:

  • Educating, training & building key team leaders & members
  • Implementing & supervising daily SOP’s
  • Checking daily inventory, purchases, key perishables & beverage stocks
  • Maintaining daily audits, attendance systems & discipline protocols
  • Coordinating marketing & customer out-reach initiatives in a non-digital era
  • Negotiating with key partners for beverage deals, key food supplies & ongoing pricing mechanisms
  • Coordinating menu revisions, trials, promotions & customer experiences

This phase was not only very exhausting but enriching as well, thus leading to great performance, high revenues & supreme reputation for all concepts & brands being established in the market-place.

The Fun Part

All hard work done, late nights & extra hours later, the fun began.

Routine is not considered fun, but after what was such a roller-coaster ride,
regular operations actually did seem like a lot of fun.

The teams were trained and set into their mode of operations, audits were aligned, marketing campaigns being implemented well, customer experiences on the rise, revenues increasing & inching higher, it was a fun ride, to be enjoyed.

Learnings

  • New territory, new country, new cultures, new ways of working.
  • Settling into working with multi-national colleagues.
  • Embracing international working styles & mechanisms.

Awards & Recognition

  • Great recognition in the form of excellent customer experiences, their feedback, media accolades, rave reviews were the hallmarks & awards won by the entire team of all the concepts.