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.
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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.”
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