When Lebanese national Fadi Malas moved to Dubai in 2005 after a long stint as a banking professional in London, little did he know his next venture would be heading up the largest F&B franchise to come out of the Middle East.
Malas knew Mohamad Bitar, founder and managing director of Just Falafel, who told him about his new venture, which took the humble falafel and made it a commercial fast-food option in a variety of flavours. When Bitar revealed to him that he was ready to take his four-store business to the next level and begin franchising, Malas joined the team to head up operations full time in 2011 and set what seemed like ambitious goals at the time.
“We did a five-year business plan to sell maybe 20 or 25 stores and it took us only a couple of weeks to do that and we haven’t looked back since,” laughs Malas.
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The team soon realised that in order to concentrate on their franchise model, they would have to sell their existing outlets to their franchisees. Retaining only one store — in Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates (MOE) — under its remit, Just Falafel sold its three additional stores in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
“When we started franchising, we thought we needed two operating infrastructures to manage propriety stores or to manage franchises. And if we were able to franchise, we’d rather sell our stores, focus on growth and only sell franchises,” explains Malas.
The business has since grown rapidly. In three years’ time, there are now over 50 operational stores under the brand, with 20 additional outlets under development, and at least 200 more signed — a number that seems to grow each week.
Malas acknowledges that he’s aware of the brand’s perception in the industry of growing too fast too soon. Undeterred though, Malas explains his competition is not just local brands, but global fast food chains such as Subway and McDonald’s.
“We’ve signed hundreds [of stores] across 18 countries and we are continuously signing, continuously talking to people and it might sound like a lot of stores, but it’s not because you have operators like Subway, who operate 42,000 stores and we still have 50 stores so we need to grow fast because we have a long way to go. If we want to operate stores in MOE and places where the big guys operate, then this is the way we have to think,” he stresses.
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