Tom Arnel and Sergio Lopez, photographed exclusively for Caterer Middle East, at The Sum of Us in Dubai.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would have heard of a phenomenon called ‘Tom & Serg’. Tom Arnel and Sergio Lopez are the co-founders of Bull & Roo Hospitality and Investments, the privately owned mothership from which the concepts Tom&Serg, The Sum of Us, and Common Grounds have set sail. But they’re far from done yet.
When Caterer Middle East spoke to them in November 2014, the duo had 49 people in their team, and one restaurant in operation. Fast forward to a year later. The change is, it’s fair to say, noticeable. Three restaurants/cafés are operational, and the entire company employs around 170 people, and is still looking. Because they are going big — double or nothing.
The path to being an F&B entrepreneur in the region is not easy, and Arnel and Lopez have faced their fair set of challenges and setbacks. The two met a few years ago and realised they had noticed the same gaps in the market. Arnel says, honestly: “We thought we could do one better, and do something that was far removed from the franchise model, or from the multi-outlet model.
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“We wanted to do something that had great coffee, great food, great service, with real people who gave a s***.”
That’s when the first location at the Al Quoz industrial area came in, and Lopez adds: “We always believed that Al Quoz could become the new Soho of Dubai — Dubai doesn’t have an area like that.”
Affordability was also of prime importance, with the owners believing they needed to supply an avenue where guests could visit almost every day. This is something they’ve translated well across all three restaurants under their remit — by smart menu engineering, with Arnel saying a lot of the dishes are vegetable-based, which helps control costs.
But actually opening Tom&Serg was not a walk in the park; Arnel admits “it was very tough”. Lopez reveals they had two investors in the project, who were present for nearly a year-and-a-half. But on the day the restaurateurs were to pay the deposit on the Al Quoz location (found after many ups and downs), the investors disappeared. Arnel now jokes that the two “freaked them out”.
Lopez is introspective. “It was one of the best things that could ever happen because all the best decisions come when you are struggling.” I suggest they got creative in desperation, at which point Arnel laughs and says that’s “absolutely what happened”.
After the setback, Arnel and Lopez called their families and made a business case study of their project — they got the investment. Lopez says: “The company became 100% ours.” Arnel adds: “Which, as he said, was the best thing that could happen because it gave us complete control over absolutely everything.
“It put the pressure on us so big, but at the end of the day, we knew it was risky going alone, but we believed in what we were doing, and we just knew it was going to work.”
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