The brains behind Glee Hospitality, Aboudi Saadi and Louay Alnajjar, believe it’s out of hotels and onto the street for the future of successful restaurant concepts
Ask managing director Aboudi Saadi, or operations director Louay Alnajjar, about hotel restaurants and your questions won’t be met with much enthusiasm.
The team behind the Dubai-based company Glee Hospitality Solutions, which specialises in F&B business development, are concentrating on what they call ‘pavement restaurants’.
| Advertisement |
“There is an oversupply in Dubai of high-end restaurants,” says Saadi. “People don’t want to go to a hotel anymore just to have dinner – and anyway, the market for hotel restaurants is saturated. There are on average about five or six in each hotel, but there is a clear lack of good high street restaurants in the UAE.”
Saadi does admit that without an alcohol licence it is harder to make money but is excited about the projects they’ve already opened in Abu Dhabi: Grand Central burger joint and Nolu’s Café, and the eight outlets they’re opening in 2012, including Donatello’s, a fine-dining Italian restaurant in Dubai World Trade Centre.
The one licensed venture Glee does have is The Gramercy in DIFC, and they’re proud of its success: “The Gramercy is our own concept and is doing really well – double what we expected,” says Saadi.
“It was originally launched as a sports bar and there’s been a bit of difficulty repositioning it in the market, but we’ve turned it into a gastro jazz pub and introduced a live jazz band in the evenings and now about 30-40% of our sales are done in the evening.
“It’s tough competing in DIFC,” Saadi admits. “Some of the biggest brands in the world are there and we’re up against them. We haven’t spent on marketing yet, but we’re doing well, and it’s in our plan.”
As well as hotel restaurants, it is international brands that Saadi and Alnajjar aren’t making much time for.
Article continues on next page ...
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
