SPECIAL REPORT
FRANCHISING
SURVIVAL OF THE WINNING CONCEPTS
Kaffeine
Marc Chehade
Since entering Lebanon’s F&B industry 20 years ago, Marc Chehade has become one of the country’s most successful developers and operators of serial concepts. Here, he talks to HN about how he’s accommodating the current challenges and looking at possible strategies for future expansion How are you developing your current offerings?
Escobar St. Nicolas
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HOSPITALITY NEWS ME | FEB-MAR 2020
We haven’t made many changes in the last year to our concept portfolio, due to the current situation in Lebanon. However, we are still going strong with the Escobar brand and now have seven branches, the most recent of which is located in Faqra. The new outlet opened summer 2019 and this year will open in summer and winter. Expansion has become quite difficult in Lebanon’s F&B market, again,
Escobar Hazmieh
due to the current situation, which is causing local owners to focus solely on maintaining their operations and even scale down in other, worse-affected areas. As a result, consumers who had gotten used to experiencing new concepts on a regular basis are now instead revisiting others they have tried and enjoyed, such as Lock Stock, Escobar and Kaffeine.
What plans do you have for regional expansion? This year, we are looking to sell some of our existing franchises to interested regional partners. We plan on targeting companies with several F&B concepts in their portfolio who would like to diversify their offerings. In this context, we are considering offering just our Kaffeine and Escobar concepts. The advantage the latter offers is that it could be adapted for launch in different Arab countries, as a stand-alone restaurant, for example, or a smoothie/fresh-fruit cocktail bar and even a combination of both. Think of it as a local
