Tell me More

The founders of More Café and owners of MIF Inc., Wouter and Marijke Lap, reveal to Louise Oakley why 2011 will signal the start of the restaurant brand’s regional expansion.

More Café is a much-loved Dubai institution, known for its striking purple theme, hanging tables, all encompassing menu and fresh, homemade bread. Its growth from one lonely Garhoud restaurant in 2002 to eight outlets by the end of 2010 is testament to its popularity — and also to the shrewd and savvy approach of the self-confessed foodies behind the brand.

Many in the industry are familiar with Wouter and Marijke Lap, made famous in the F&B world by the success of More Café and arguably the most happily married couple in the sector, but there is a lot more to their business empire than a handful of restaurants — and this is what I was keen to find out more about.

Rather appropriately, I met the Laps at the original More Café in Garhoud, a restaurant they still own and operate today, along with outlets at Al Murooj Rotana and the Gold and Diamond Park.

The remaining outlets — at Mall of Emirates, Dubai Mall, Dubai International Financial Centre, Festival City and Mirdif City Centre — are run by Al Tayer Group, the GCC-wide franchisee for More Café.

It is obvious the pair are still fond of the Garhoud outlet, which has very much proved the model for the succeeding restaurants in terms of both the look and feel.

Marike Lap-Heijer — the most talkative of the pair — reminisces: “We said we wanted to come up with something that would at least be trendy or contemporary for a longer period — where the older its gets, the more comfortable it gets”.

Her husband, she continues, was especially keen to have a restaurant that was comfortable for men as well as women.

“Wouter said ‘I want a restaurant that is masculine’. At that stage, in 2002 there were a lot of coffee shops around which were really aimed at the female market, especially in Jumeirah; they were all very nice and fluffy with little chairs and little tables and tea cups with ears and he said ‘I cant sit there, I don’t feel comfortable there’.

“So we said we wanted something where businessmen will come; that’s why we have the tables very far apart compared to a lot of other coffee shops; inside and outside, we really keep the space.

If you look at your revenue per square metre, it might not be the cleverest thing to do when you do your calculations, but at the end of the day you win, because people feel more comfortable when they’re not close with somebody who can overhear the conversation. That is why we get people all day — it’s worked out very well.”

The model has been very successful, but its demand for space means it’s a difficult one to roll out, location being paramount.

“More needs a lot of space, so it’s not like a restaurant that you can put in the corner of a mall in a nice 100m² space — you need a minimum of 500m²,” says Lap-Heijer.

This is where Al Tayer comes in. The group has opened three More Cafés during the past 12 months and after two and half years on board, is more than familiar with the specific requirements of More.

“Al Tayer wanted to start in Dubai to make sure we get it right — [they said] you are here so we can work together very closely and once we feel 100% comfortable and we know what we are doing, then we will expand. So now we are there; I think we are happy at the moment with the number of outlets we have, so as of this year we’ll expand outside of Dubai,” says Lap-Heijer.

Where exactly depends on Al Tayer, but Lap-Heijer says Abu Dhabi would be the logical choice. The group is also looking at sites in Qatar and will expand to other GCC countries.

This is not all though — Lap-Heijer says they have received interest in More from Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, not to mention further afield.

“We’ve had interest even from London — there are so many people coming through Dubai. We’ve had interest from Russia, Australia and Singapore, so it’s interesting,” reveals Lap-Heijer, adding that More could definitely end up as a global brand.

“We’d need to find a partner who knows what they’re doing. You can’t have a franchise partner who is not in the restaurant or hotel business for this particular concept,” she says.

Other ventures
While the regional expansion of More Café may have been handed over to Al Tayer, this does not mean that the Laps are sitting back and watching the growth materialise — far from it.

The pair are focused on several new business initiatives under More’s mother company MIF Inc., which are growing in volume, and in turn, will help support the More Café chain.

First is the growth of Intelligent Foods, the bakery business that the pair started in 2000. At their factory in Al Qusais, all the baked goods, sauces, fresh pasta are prepared and supplied to More Cafés in Dubai.

Wouter Lap explains: “We control the quality from the beginning to end and there is no fluctuation, whether people go to one More or another More, they get the same standard”.

He says that MIF has recently started its own trading company, with plans in 2011 to import its own basic ingredients — thus escaping the never-ending increase in prices of ingredients in Dubai, which Lap says suppliers can change with just a week’s notice.

“It always goes up, it never goes down,” the pair say in unison, with Wouter joking “for the next step we are going to have our own cows!”
They may be able to laugh about it but, as Wouter points out, the costs for businesses in Dubai — from water and electricity, to labour cards, to raw ingredients — make it very difficult for new standalone restaurant brands to get a foothold in the competitive market.

“It’s getting very expensive to set up a business. The way we started is impossible at this stage. I’m sure there are other people like us with new great ideas who are unfortunately not able to let their roots grow,” laments Lap.

Lap-Heijer continues: “The biggest advantage for us is we produce from the beginning, so that has been tremendously cost effective for us [in coping with the recession]. We roast our own coffee, we import coffee beans from all over the world and roast them here, so that saves a lot”.

“If you don’t do that and all of these changes are happening in the market, you have to absorb everything in your operation. We have our manufacturing arm where we sell from the factory to More Cafés, so then we can absorb a little bit there, as well as cut certain suppliers who are fluctuating in the market,” adds Lap.

It is the Laps’ end-to-end knowledge of the F&B business — with a combined 60 years in the industry — that is behind the success of one of their other ventures, Creative Connections.

This is MIF Inc.’s hospitality consultancy, restaurant design and turn-key project arm, which Lap-Heijer says is going from strength to strength.
“We recently completed a full restaurant project in Abu Dhabi on Saaidyat Island in the Manara, where the exhibitions are for the Louvre and Guggenheim,” she reveals.

“We’re not running it. We were project consultants. We did the full design, recruited the staff, trained the staff and then we hand it over to them and then its theirs.

“We do the same for hotels — there’s so many companies that just need a little bit of guidance to steer them,” says Lap-Heijer, adding that negotiations with two hotel chains are currently underway and that a number of new brands will launch in 2011.

“We now have the opportunity to develop concepts into full blown, worked out, detailed restaurants,” says Lap.

“What gives people a lot of confidence is they’ve seen us operate here in the market for almost 17 years, 10 years of which has been for ourselves — from purchasing the goods, manufacturing, operating the restaurants, and doing the back of the house financials. We can help them with all the stages — we’re not just hit and run.”

The demand is growing, they explain, because of the number of investors diversifying into hospitality.

“There are not many people very eager to invest in real estate. So they have these funds which they still want to have a certain percentage interest or profits from and to go into the stock market, or to put it in the bank doesn’t give them a lot, so they say let’s go to trusted proven operators.

“Then the other advantage of course is that just before the boom started everyone was looking to Europe and the US and the Far East for concepts, but it’s very different to operate a concept from any of these countries locally. Every country has its local challenges. It always surprised me that people think you can copy paste anything anywhere,” adds Lap.

What is not surprising is the ongoing intention of the Laps to continue to make a difference to the region’s hospitality sector. This is despite the fact they tell me that they won’t be encouraging their children to follow suit and take up the family business, and that for many years, their only chance of romance was candle-lit breakfasts in the early hours — the only time they got to spend together.

Their rationale is simple; they love what they do, from hearing their children’s friends list their favourite More meal to overhearing guests argue over why their local More is the best.

“We’re enjoying it,” explains Lap-Heijer. “Whatever you do, you should always enjoy every day going to work, thinking about ‘what can we do, what can be improved’. It should not be a burden on your back, it has to be fun. We still enjoy the More concept very much.”