If you live in Dubai, it’s more than likely you’ve eaten something prepared by Appetite.
Whether it’s at the office, courtesy of Appetite’s food carts and pop-up stations; at an event catered by Appetite; or in one of Dubai’s three 1762 outlets, you have probably played a role in helping the home-grown business to thrive.
Now, with the launch of its latest venture, Appetite The Shop, the company is one step closer to taking over Dubai, the founders reveal to Caterer Middle East.
“We want to conquer the world,” smiles Manar El Jayousi when we meet, appropriately in one of the company’s three branches of gourmet deli 1762. El Jayouchi co-founded Appetite more than 10 years ago with Suzi Croft. The pair met soon after Croft moved to Dubai in 1999 — he had made the leap seven years prior — and tapped into a burgeoning market for wholesome food-on-the-go, starting with food carts visiting offices delivering “proper food” at lunchtime back in 2005.
“We’ve always been about good, healthy food. We don’t add preservatives and we make items as you would at home. We don’t make food for people to put in the fridge for three days — we’re all about fresh food eaten within 24 hours,” Croft states.
“That was our philosophy from day one,” Al Jayouchi adds. “In Appetite, whatever is made in the morning at 6am is finished by 6pm and will not be served the next day. We operate on a 24-hour cycle and that is one of our strengths. It puts a lot of pressure on, as there is only a short period where you can sell, but it is important for freshness.
“We want people to eat the sandwich when it tastes exactly as it is supposed to taste. If you keep it in the fridge for the next day, health-wise it will be absolutely fine but the taste would have deteriorated from where we wanted it to be.”
This window is even smaller at Appetite’s sister company 1762 he explains: “1762 as a concept is the same as Appetite but the food is not in a pack and we only have a three-hour window. This means we have more freedom with the ingredients; the food is not on the shelf, so we can serve items that wouldn’t hold up on the shelf for even half an hour in a package.”
Though business is good (at 1762 it is not unusual to see a queue almost out the door at midday), operating on a 24-hour cycle raises issues surrounding food waste. Croft tells Caterer Middle East that the company “give bits and pieces to charity”, including labour camps, but notes: “It’s getting harder to give food to charity [due to food safety regulations], so we tend to give unsold food to staff.”
Al Jayouchi elaborates: “You have to remember the dangerous side of food management — we don’t know if the cold chain is being sustained and if something goes wrong, we are liable for the product. Even if it’s not being sold, it still has an expiry date of 24 hours after it was made.”
More of a pressing concern than managing food waste is meeting demand. The company shifts 6,000 units per day, which can be anything from a cookie to a sandwich. Al Jayouchi estimates that this means, across the brands, they feed about 4,000 to 4,500 people per day in Dubai.
That number will steadily rise now Appetite The Shop is open. Speaking about the new addition, Al Jayouchi tells Caterer Middle East that this concept was actually the couple’s original idea when they wanted to enter the market.
| Advertisement |
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
