For some, retirement means the start of an easy cruise life. Patrice Douce took it literally, converting a 56-metre boat into a fine dining restaurant. It was a challenging task, but if anyone could pull it off, a Frenchman could, writes Shalaka Paradkar.
It's easy to spot the Bateaux Dubai. She is that long, sleek vessel bobbing gently moored opposite the British Embassy. Amid the knot of gritty, weatherbeaten dhows, Bateaux Dubai is resplendent, with her dark wengewood hull and all-glass cabin enclosure.
As the dusk sky turns gold, the boat embarks on yet another dinner cruise, sailing through the waters of the Dubai Creek. Smoky jazz vocals waft across the waters as guests enjoy a gourmet meal; the pink, green and purple neon of Deira's skyscrapers liquid paint the waves.
On the opposite bank, in stark cntrast to this neon fluid world, Bur Dubai's windtowers stand unflinchingly straight against the sky.
Only a Frenchman could have taken the romance of Dubai Creek and transformed it into a multi-sensory celebration of all the good things in life.
"It was not easy though," confesses Patrice Douce, executive director and founder of Bateaux Dubai. "The Creek used to be synonymous with (mediocre) service. We had to fight that idea and convince people that a very nice evening can be had on a dinner cruise. It was a bold commitment!"
The 65-year old Frenchman is no stranger to intrepid ventures. A 1965 economics graduate of the prestigious Hautes Etudes Commerciales, Douce had to choose between a career in finance, for which he was trained, or one in food, which was his passion.
Like any self-respecting Frenchman, he chose the latter.
After serving as an adviser to the Algerian Finance Ministry, Douce joined Sodexho, a food services company, as junior executive in 1972.
He then spent seven months training in Sodexho's industrial kitchens in Paris. Later he was assigned to set up and manage the Remote Sites business for the company.
Douce headed Sodexho's operations in Latin America and the US before being appointed president and chief operating officer in 1990 with responsibility for Food and Management Services operations in Latin America, Asia, the Pacific and North America as well as for Remote Sites and River and Harbour Cruises, a position from which he retired in 2002.
Sodexho's reputation for turning its managers into entrepreneurs held true in this case.
Douce relocated to Dubai after his retirement to launch a new venture: Bateaux Dubai, a luxury restaurant boat on the Dubai Creek, modelled on similar ventures on the Thames and the Seine. (Sodexho also took a small stake in the venture.) The boat is now managed and operated by Jebel Ali International Hotels.
Douce is also president of the French Business Council, which is celebrating its 20th year of promoting business relations between France and Dubai. His energy and passion for work, even post-retirement, belie his advancing years.
"Each age presents competitive advantages," he says. "I see two main benefits to getting older: freedom of thought and of action. The key to stepping down successfully is, as always, anticipate and plan!
"The qualities I most value in people are reliability and transparency - when you do what you say and say what you do."
And those very qualities are clearly the ones that Douce's friends and family cherish about him.
I
I unwind and stay fit by always being on the move, living in the future rather than in the past and challenging myself both mentally and physically. I love early mornings, when I am the most physically and intellectually fit.
I never compromise on the quality and potential of people. I believe in hiring for the future, not for the present; hiring people who are better than (me).
I am by nature impatient with a tendency to expect and require more than people can reasonably deliver.
If life were a cruise, my marina would be in Italy. Its offerings stimulate all the senses - there's natural scenery, culture, history, food and beverages.
What floats my boat is my collection of French 18th century porcelain. They represent, in my view, the quintessence of artistic achievement as well as being incredible technical challenges of their time. That level of craftsmanship has never been matched.
The aspect of my French heritage I am most proud of was the Siecle des Lumieres (Century of Light; the 18th century) which produced philosophers and writers who have eternally influenced our values and views of the world.
Honestly, I dislike failure but I may say that success did not generate arrogance in me either. I have tasted failure after having wrongly trusted some people. Sometimes you tend to project your own personal traits on others - and you fail.
I am unquestionably perceived as a boss (including at home!) but also as a reliable, trustworthy and loyal friend.
Me
Me and my childhood:
I was born in Epernay, in the heart of France's Champagne district. I had a classical French upbringing in a not very traditional upper middle class family with one elder sister who saw herself as a back-up mum.
Overall, I saw school as boring and an unbearable restriction on my liberty. At the time, it seemed like a long, enduring challenge that I wished I could just jump over. Knowing without learning was my permanent dream and, unfortunately, an unachievable aspiration.
In my early teens, my parents threatened to send me to a Jesuit boarding institution as a disciplinary measure. To me that was the ultimate restriction on personal liberty.
I made it abundantly clear to my parents that I would set fire to the place. They feared the challenge and abandoned the idea - rightly, I must confess!
Me and my career:
My first appointment was as a junior financial consultant for the Ministry of Finance in the then newly independent Algeria. Being in permanent contact with senior consultants from major worldwide consulting firms was an incredibly rewarding experience, a kind of field doctorate!
When I joined Sodexho in 1972, the company was a toddler: there was no cash and no name. Shortly after I joined, the company was caught in a cash crunch that was very close to being lethal.
In those days whenever anybody asked me who I worked for, the response inevitably was "Sodex ... what?" Sodexho was not exactly a leader in human resources management either. I remember the first day I joined - they had forgotten that they had hired me! But as I always tend to look at the glass as being half-full, I decided to stay.
Food services then was a highly fragmented market, mainly dominated by ‘Mom and Pop' ventures without vision and strategy. These ventures were happy to eke out a living just cooking and with basic management skills.
At the time, Sodexho's founder, owner and president Pierre Bellon would repeat, "Some day I'll be the world leader." And boy, did he make that happen! Today Sodexho has 320,0000 employees in 75 countries and 12 billion Euros in sales.
Pierre Bellon has certainly been my key mentor. When the business was young, he knew all the site managers and their families personally, but that was no longer possible when we had about 40 restaurants.
At the time, there was virtually no unemployment in France and large companies immediately hired all recent graduates.
He would say, "We haven't got a plan. I trust you and I'm giving you responsibility. Take them and go - you to Bordeaux, you to Lyon, you to Paris, Belgium, Italy or Spain. You'll devise your own career plan." And that's exactly what's happened. Sodexho is a machine that creates entrepreneurs.
The hardest challenge of my career was in Saudi Arabia in 1974 when I started the Sodexho joint venture with just $25,000, my good health and the blessings of my boss.
It was a time that brought home to me the truth of what (former leader of China) Mao Tse-tung would say to his meagre supporters in the early days, "Rely on your own resources and make things happen."
But it was also the time when I was happiest. There's no feeling quite like making a team win with minimum resources against contenders who are many times stronger than you!
Me and my family:
When I recruit people, I am fond of saying that you cannot fight both outside and inside the home. You need to have a certain degree of comfort at home so you can do your best outside.
I could not have succeeded without a partner who understood my way of life. I met my wife, Agnes, through friends. She has always been accommodating to (the demands of) my career as I used to travel extensively, sometimes for weeks on end without coming home.
Although she is a lawyer by training, she was flexible enough to wrap her practice and relocate with me.
We celebrate our 30th anniversary next year. At the end of the day, marriage brings two individuals together.
I think the key to a successful partnership is respecting that fact. She has helped me to balance my professional life and the rest of my life. Though to be honest, when I was working at Sodexho, there was no fair balance between work and family life.
Once I retired, I was able to spend more time with the family to a certain extent. However, my sons were grown up and not at home.
But I have no regrets (about my family life) as such - there were choices to be made. One cannot be in two places at the same time. Honestly, there is always a trade off between personal and professional (concerns).
I also think I was able to give my family an exposure to different cultures through my various stints.
(The thing that struck me most being) a parent was the realisation that in parenting, unlike in cooking, the same ingredients and procedures can lead to totally unexpected results.
My sons, although born from the same parents and given the same education are nearly opposite in temperament. My older son, Quentin, is 27; he is a typical workaholic, an ambitious young professional.
My younger son, Florent, 21, is an un baba cool (hippy) who will soon be graduating as a professional helicopter pilot. I am proud to say that although they are so different, they share the same high ethics and values of their parents.
Me and Bateaux Dubai:
After retiring from Sodexho and relocating to Dubai, I noticed the city's beautiful creek and the lovely scenery along its banks. There were similarities to Paris in that there were many tourists and business visitors.
I thought the idea of a dinner cruise aboard a vessel would work very well. The boat would have to be radically different from the dhows that have been cruising the Creek for many years.
Sodexho, a small shareholder in Bateaux Dubai, operates similar services in Paris at the Eiffel Tower and in London. Consequently, I have significant experience in this business.
The boat had to be contemporary and designed to provide an upscale experience in food, service and ambience. The issue was that we couldn't find this type of boat secondhand, it had to be custom built.
So in 2003 we commissioned a Parisian firm Seine Design, which specialises in this type of vessel, to design the 56-metre-long boat.
Bateaux Dubai was built at the shipyard in Jadaf, at the end of the Creek. It's a boat that sails, yes, but it is also a fully functioning restaurant - now that is an engineering challenge.
The shipyard wanted to (scrap the idea of turning it into a restaurant) and make it a ship. But in the end, we subcontracted the various parts. It was tough because no ship of the sort had ever been built before in Dubai.
But in the end it all came together well and there was something new in Dubai that was consistent with all the new development.
The moment that I will remember for the rest of my life was in October 2004, when the boat sailed to its present site opposite the British Embassy. It was like watching your baby take her first steps. Until then, it was a sound concept but to witness it become concrete was a poignant moment.
The big learning (experience) in our first year of operations was something we had not quite anticipated. The concept was completely new and there was nothing comparable.
The Creek did not have the image of a fine dining destination. So we had a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. People would not come aboard and until they did, they wouldn't know what we were offering.
Our benchmarks were the similar river cruises operating in Paris and London and ... the finest restaurants in Dubai.
People in Dubai have very high expectations of their dining destinations. If you have to build a long-term reputation and have repeat business, you have to be visible.
Bateaux Dubai is equipped with a full-service kitchen ... so all meals can be prepared onboard and served immediately. The vessel incorporates a host of environmentally friendly features which ensure that it produces no effluent while reducing noise and exhaust emissions.
The most exciting thing was that we were pioneering a concept that was new to Dubai. The frustration has been a lack of genuine competition ... often you are only as good as your competition forces you to be!
Myself
Do you have any words of wisdom for people who want to start their own business?
Make your dream a vision, squeeze the vision into a plan and a budget. If you have dreamed of it, it will happen - and that applies to your personal life too.
Opportunities abound in all segments of the market, provided they are properly addressed with a long-term vision.
The short-term pitfall the (hospitality) industry must guard against is the greed of operators spoiled by the business boom, particularly in the hotel industry. To them I say, beware! Clients have a longer memory than you often think.
The challenge is to transform the dream into reality, which is when you need a lot of courage, hard work and persistence.
What is unique about the French way of doing business?
The main strength of French business is its flexibility and willingness to adapt. However, there is also a slight Mediterranean laziness.
Even though France borders Germany, French people are more Mediterranean than (northern European). They are also creative and innovative when it comes to problem solving.
How do you approach making tough decisions?
When you are small you are more fragile. So there is a certain amount of courage that is needed to take quick decisions, to not let things stay as they are in the hope that they will improve.
When you look at the fate of certain big, famous and powerful companies that fell sick or disappeared - companies like Polaroid, for instance - and you analyse the reasons for their failure, at the heart of it will always be the fact that the leadership lacked courage to make tough decisions.
Markets change and so do customers, but a company's leaders need to make the correct decisions and to act taking into account the environment and staff expectations.
Managing people is always difficult. There can be people who have been extremely good and loyal, but there comes a time when the person is not fit for the company and one has to let him or her go.
Personally, I have ethical issues with firing somebody who is in their fifties. I do not think it's acceptable. In my experience, it is best to address this issue quickly, personally and with the individual concerned in a fair and appropriate manner.
Sometimes letting go of people - whether they're employees or even clients - is better for the company's health. Just like employees, there are some clients you shouldn't have.
Although it's tough to say no to a potential client, it's essential. At Bateaux Dubai we often get calls from potential clients with a certain budget that cannot be workable for us. We just say no in the nicest possible way.
