Glee Hospitality: Providing the ingredients for a successful F&B business
Curating F&B and hospitality solutions for the discerning entrepreneur
Abdul Kader Saadi, Managing Director, Glee Hospitality Solutions, takes us through the brand’s service portfolio and its growth story as a premium consultant for F&B businesses in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
When was Glee Hospitality launched, what is the company creed?
Glee Hospitality Solutions was launched a decade ago in the city of Dubai and after a fruitful 10 years of operating in the region we are proud to have expanded our base of operations into Saudi Arabia by opening an office in Riyadh through SAGIA. Our company creed is that it is the passion, creativity and dedication of our teams which forms the very backbone for our clients’ success stories.
Which are some of the big ticket F&B projects that the brand has provided its consultancy services to?
We have been very fortunate to launch some very successful restaurant concepts over the years. Some of our earlier concepts worth noting include Café 57, Molten ME and Burger Hood, which have all enjoyed relatively great success in the market. We have also launched a slew of successful concepts, including Parlour Café, The Roost, Nourish, Kobeya, Kish Mish, Turf, Mint &Coco (Muscat) Black Spoon and OLE (KSA), which were all met with very positive market reception.
As a rapidly expanding SME, how do you see the sector and the government supporting you in your growth story?
The sector is currently very competitive and the required level of investment to compete is quiet high both within the UAE and the KSA markets. The Covid-19 crisis has obviously impacted many SMEs and start-ups and their survivability is in question without the support, investments and/or the ability to resume a pre-Covid-19 workflow. As of now we haven’t seen a direct support into our sector.
What are your future plans?
Our future plans are to maintain our leadership position in the UAE whilst we strengthen our expansion into the KSA, which we established a year ago, and continues to prosper despite the Covid-19 crisis. We have secured deals in KSA during this period and have adapted our strategy to carry out the desk research and development during this period so that the projects will be ready to launch end of 2020, early 2021.
We are also developing our MVP for some F&B tech opportunities, which are in the early conceptual phases. They will require fund raising but we are confident to be lucrative to the sector once conceptualised.