The Birth of a Dream

“Every time a man puts a new idea across he finds ten men who thought of it before he did - but they only thought of it.” --Anon

It was the Fall Semester of my junior year in college. We had come back from the summer and I noticed there was something new and exciting about the campus vibe near my dorm. Right next to my apartment a Qdoba Mexican restaurant opened. I was completely enamored by this place. I was enthralled by the simplicity of its menu and the ability to create a myriad of options using the same ingredients but combining them in different ways. Qdoba was an instant hit on-campus. There were long lines snaking around every time I went – which was very often.

The rest of my junior year was super busy, in particular during the start of the spring semester gearing up for landing a summer internship. For those that don’t know much about the Wharton culture, internship season is a stressful experience and scoring a prized offer is in many ways a crowning achievement. By that measure I was fortunate enough to ultimately land a gig at Morgan Stanley. For me, Investment Banking was a complete thud. The only silver lining from that experience was meeting Brendan Petri, known as the Petri Dish. Petri was a character, from playing the air guitar a la Jack Black in School of Rock, to serenading me with ridiculous songs; the Petri Dish made the summer a lot of fun.

That summer while Petri and I banked like champions we would order dinner and eat together. Brendan would order something different every night meanwhile I would crush the Kabobs. It got to the point that a couple of weeks into our internship Brendan nicknamed me ‘Amir Kabob’ which quickly caught on and became my nickname in the office. One evening mid-way through our internship we were anxiously surfing seamless web to figure out where to order from for tonight’s dinner. After a couple minutes of surfing, Brendan threw his hands in defeat and turned to me and said “Amir Kabob, order me what you normally get yourself’. That night Brendan and I both ate Lamb Kabob platters with a bowl of hummus some bhaba ganoush and pita bread. After the meal, Brendan turned to me and said, “Amir Kabob, this food is awesome how come I haven’t eaten this stuff before?” At that point, I thought to myself, how come Brendan hasn’t eaten this kind of food before? He’s clearly a worldly and adventuresome guy, yet he’s never enjoyed Kabobs, how could that be? The more I thought about it the more I realized most Middle Eastern restaurants tend to be hole-in-the-wall shops and very ‘ethnic’ in nature, and nicer places tend to be too expensive for regular dining. Thus, it made sense why even though Middle Eastern food is pretty awesome, it’s not as widely known and consumed.

I thought to myself someone should bring Middle Eastern style food in the same format that Qdoba was serving Mexican food. To me the concept made a lot of sense since Middle Eastern foods can be prepared in a similar assembly line process and you can create a lot of different food combinations with a limited number of ingredients. Not to mention, if done right Middle Eastern food is healthier than Mexican foods since Kabobs are grilled and nothing is fried. To me, the idea had merit and no one was doing it the way I had envisioned it…

Thus, it was then and there during the summer of 2005 that the idea was born, it just took a little while and some convincing along the way to pursue it….

-Amir

To be or not to be..

“We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.” -- Aneurin Bevan

Thanks to everyone who took the survey last week! We got some great feedback from you all and also collected 210 completed responses from the United Sample panel. In analyzing the results we were excited to find that the data validated our hypotheses for the most part. Over 80% of our sample said they enjoyed eating kabobs but 75% of that group said they only eat it out sometimes or rarely. The number one reason these people don’t eat kabobs more often is because they don’t know of any good restaurants nearby. Of the people who initially said they don’t enjoy eating kabobs or hadn’t tried it before, over half said it was because they don’t know what it is, don’t know where to get it, or had a bad experience in the past. All of these data points give us greater confidence that there is a definite need for a more mainstream and easily accessible fast-casual kabob restaurant. Enter Saffron Grill! :)

We also received some very constructive feedback on the product concept and sample menu. Turns out our “simple 5-step process” comes across a lot more complex than we thought. Although nearly 90% of the people said it seemed very simple and straightforward or easy to understand the menu, the comments highlighted some key questions for us. One person said, “There is so much information and I don’t know what a lot of the food on the menu is” and another, “Too many choices, need to give sample combinations.” This sprung up a debate amongst our team on the pros and cons of a “do-it-yourself, assembly-line-style” menu versus a more traditional menu with preset items to choose from. Our initial plan was to empower consumers to personalize their order 100% so they could engage with the food and mix and match the different options to their liking. This was inspired by the Chipotles and Qdobas of the world, and lends itself well to a successful scalable model. But clearly kabobs are not as easily understood by Americans as burritos or tacos so we run the risk of confusing people and potentially leading them to have a bad experience if they don’t use the “right” combination of ingredients for their order. Even a friend of ours who is of Pakistani background and is very familiar with this type of cuisine corroborated this point of view. Thanks Khalid :) What are your thoughts on this? Feel free to add your comments on this post!

Overall the survey results were extremely helpful and well-worth the time and investment. We hope to do more market research as we go along and look forward to sharing more insights with you. For now, we know we have a lot more work to do on developing the product and menu further, and need to make some tough decisions on how we want to position Saffron Grill. That’s where a strong chef comes in. Stay tuned in the coming weeks to learn more about our approach to finding the perfect chef!

-Artina

Doing our homework, part 2

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Of course doing your due diligence isn’t all fun and games. In addition to eating at various kabob restaurants, we have been working on drafting our own consumer survey to gather primary data on our target market and their eating habits. We constructed a series of questions that will hopefully provide us with key insights along the way. We are also using this as a gauge to validate our concept and hear what consumers think about the idea, the menu, the logo, the tagline, and other specifics. Our goal is to analyze the responses to make strong data-driven decisions as opposed to doing things on a whim or gut feeling. So how exactly are we collecting this data?

Well, it turns out the world of online consumer research is way more complicated than the basic Survey Monkey surveys we all created in college. We first looked into all the different vendors that paid a panel of consumers to take online surveys for market research purposes. We compared Market Tools, United Sample, The Sample Network, Affordable Samples, and Panel Speak. Their quotes ran from $1800 to $4700 to get 200 completed responses from people who fit the demographic and behavioral criteria we specified. We were initially shocked at the wide range and dug a bit deeper into the specific charges. It turned out that 50% of the costs came from programming the questions into a survey tool. Some companies have their own ‘proprietary technologies’ whereas others use vendors like Survey Gizmo, Zoomerang, QuestionPro, and even Survey Monkey. After evaluating the various licenses offered by these companies we realized that the market research vendors were charging a significant premium for the labor costs. So we decided to be scrappy… how hard could it be to program 50 questions into an online tool anyways?

Pretty hard. It took over 20 hours to figure out the QuestionPro system and get the sequence right. Since we wanted to use some advanced features like skip logic and branching it required several attempts to ensure we were asking the right questions to the right people. But in the end it was well worth it because I saved our team a couple hundred dollars and learned a skill that can be leveraged in the future, as we’ll likely want to do more consumer surveys as we launch. Now that the survey is programmed in QuestionPro, we are going to set it live in a few days and collect responses through United Sample. I look forward to sharing the results and insights with you all soon. In the meantime feel free to take the survey yourself and tell us what you really think! We’d really appreciate it and you’ll get a sneak peek into our menu and logo drafts. Just go to http://saffrongrill.questionpro.com – thanks!

-Artina

Doing our homework, part 1

"A small leak can sink a great ship." – Benjamin Franklin

Over the past few months we have been researching the restaurant industry to educate ourselves about the space and make note of macro trends. We’ve read a lot of books, articles, case studies, and business plans. We’ve interviewed numerous industry experts, restaurant owners, chefs, and even our friends. It’s amazing how much there is to absorb! But research comes in many shapes and forms and by far the best part of doing our homework has been trying out various restaurants that offer kabobs. While we’d like to think our concept is pretty unique, the truth is there are lots of similar restaurants we can learn from.

One such example is a fast-causal Mediterranean startup in New York that my friend Sophia told me about. Sophia is an Equity Research Analyst at Barclay’s Capital covering the restaurant space (by day), and a food connoisseur/critic (by night). She always knows about the best restaurants in the city and writes about them in her blog: http://restomanifesto.com. When we first heard about this startup, we were a bit disappointed that there was a restaurant that seemed so close in style and feel to our idea. But a closer look revealed that there was no mention of ‘kabob’ anywhere on their menu. While they had a similar ‘do-it-yourself’ approach, we were relieved to know their positioning was very different than what we envisioned for Saffron Grill. Plus if you look at the fast-casual Mexican restaurant space, there are several chains that are all very similar, yet successful in their own right (think Chipotle, Qdoba, Baja Fresh, Boloco, etc).

In any case, the last time I was in NY I knew I had to check this restaurant out for myself. Luckily I had my two awesome colleagues, Sara and Evan, to join me in conducting firsthand research! We all enjoyed the experience and it was amazing how similar to Chipotle it felt – from the rustic-modern décor to the black polo shirt uniforms. One thing I really liked was that their menu board was a digital screen rather than a static poster board. Sara pointed out (from her past experience working at corporate Chik-fil-A) that this was likely also more cost-effective in the long term because printing traditional signage is a lot more expensive than you would think. I also learned that the containers you serve your food in are just as important as the taste of the food itself – well, almost. I personally felt the food tasted okay but the containers made it seem even less enjoyable because they weren’t big enough to stir things around the way I like. While these are all seemingly trivial points, it was interesting to assess the restaurant from a critical standpoint and pay attention to the details that stand out to different consumers. After all, we will have to make each of these decisions at some point down the road, and the sum of all their parts will make a difference to our success.

-Artina

Everything happens for a reason

No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently. -- Agnes DeMille

We heard back from the broker for the Comcast Center last week. He said he was very interested in our concept and wanted to get on the phone to learn more. We were a bit nervous because the broker would be joined by the director of the food court who has a reputation for being a bulldog. Luckily our senior advisor, a friend’s father who has significant restaurant experience and is investing in our startup, was able to join us on the call. Now I normally don’t get anxious about calls with my clients at Google, but selling your own idea is a whole other story. In any case, he grilled us but we were able to impress the director and he asked us to move forward with creating a ‘nickel package’ which is architectural lingo for a basic sketch of the construction to be done. The broker also mentioned that there were a few terms on the LOI that we would need to discuss further but that we were close to making a deal.

We were super excited about this outcome and began talking to general contractors and architectural firms to work on the drawings. After a few conversations we decided to move forward with one architect. But first we wanted to confirm with the Comcast Center broker that it made sense for us to invest significant dollars in these drawings since we last spoke. Little did we know that the broker had been aggressively pursuing a deal with another restaurant owner at the same time. We had heard rumors of this but didn’t put much weight in it because the space has been empty for nearly two years and it seemed more like a negotiation tactic on the broker’s part. To our dismay he told us that we should hold on the nickel package because they had signed an LOI with this other restaurant owner, and they have a two-week exclusive period to close the deal fully.

We tried to push back on this but it seems like they had a week’s edge on us and were able to get together their drawings and agree on terms more quickly. So all we can do is wait on this now and hope for the best. If for some reason their deal falls apart, we will have to be aggressive with moving forward. But it is more likely that they will close the deal so no we need to start back at square one. This felt like a setback for sure, but we believe that things happen for a reason and ultimately we will see the silver lining in the clouds. Perhaps the Comcast Center location wasn’t meant for us and this is a sign that we should keep looking elsewhere, which is just what we’ll do.

-Artina

Shifting our mindset

I can accept failure, but I can't accept not trying. --Michael Jordan

Up until now we have been so set on Philadelphia and finding a standalone site that we didn’t really consider other options. So we spent some time recently driving through various parts of central New Jersey to see if we should look there. After all, there are several Chipotles scattered throughout and they seem to do well. But we quickly realized that it would be much more challenging to bring a new concept with no brand image to a suburban town than an urban city. We can’t expect people to drive several miles to try our restaurant in Jersey, whereas we know people are always looking for new places to eat as they walk around in the city. So we felt more conviction in our plan to find a site in Philadelphia, but we also decided to branch out and explore some food court locations.

So one stormy day, we fought the rain and wind to visit the food court in the Liberty Place, a building in Center City comprised of shops, offices, residences, and a Westin hotel. It was surprisingly busy for a rainy Saturday afternoon and we were excited when we heard from the Chick Fila cashier they serve 400-500 customers on an average weekday. We also saw a food court space in the new Comcast Center building, which is the tallest high-rise in all of Center City. It houses hundreds of Comcast offices with some shops and restaurants on the lower level. We are very excited about this one in particular because the rent is lower than the Liberty Place and the surrounding restaurants would all serve our brand image well.

We submitted a bid for both of these spaces the other day and are waiting anxiously to hear back from the landlords. Hopefully this shift in our approach yields more positive results. Either way, we know we have a long way to go and we just have to keep trying :)

-Artina

The city of brotherly love... not!

I just grabbed a spoon. -- Ross Gellar, Friends

This is a big project and we have a lot to learn before we can make it happen. At this point we have interviewed various chefs, restaurant owners, and industry experts to pick their brains about our concept. So far we have gotten very positive feedback on the idea and have acquired sufficient funding for an opening. We have worked hard to put together an initial business plan and are conducting a market research survey to gather more data. I’ll tell you more about all this later but for now our focus is finding a space for our restaurant.

We are in the process of working with real estate brokers to identify the perfect location. This is our biggest challenge right now as our team is based in Boston, MA but we are looking at sites in Philadelphia, PA. We chose the city of brotherly love as our first location because it is a major metropolitan city that suits our concept well, and the real estate costs are lower than other markets like New York or Boston. Plus, Amir and I know the neighborhoods well having gone to college at Penn and the three of us are all comfortable moving there when we open. Unfortunately, finding the perfect site within Philly is not as easy as we thought it would be.

We were very interested in a location on Penn’s campus that used to be a former bagel and sandwich shop. We saw this place with our first broker back in November, and he told us Penn wasn’t interested in our concept because they wanted to bring in another breakfast/bagel shop. Just recently we found out that Penn is moving forward with another restaurant that doesn’t specialize in breakfast and the deal is almost closed. This was very upsetting because our broker didn’t really vouch for us the way we had hoped and we weren’t as aggressive as we should have been. But we learned our lesson not to take no for an answer and keep checking in on locations we are interested in.

Another site on Penn’s campus was a brand new space on the ground floor of a residential building. It would have been the perfect size and location, but Penn told us the university doesn’t want another food unit there because there are already a few restaurants in the strip. We pushed back some more and the broker said he would let us know if they changed their mind. This was a bit of a bummer as well but perhaps there are some blessings in disguise as the block is extremely competitive and it would have been very expensive to build out the space for our restaurant.
The third site we were very excited about is a former burger shop in Center City. It seemed like prime real estate and it was fully fit out as a restaurant so the startup costs would be less. Of course the asking price per square foot was extremely high and we put in a bid for much less back in December. We weren’t so surprised when we didn’t hear back from the landlord on our LOI (letter of interest). However, we saw the space again in February with our new broker and this time the current tenant was there as well. This is the guy who owns the burger shop that went out of business and is still paying rent to the landlord. We figured this would be a great opportunity to strike a deal with the tenant to sublease the space from him, rather than negotiate with the landlord. Boy, were we wrong! This guy laughed at us when we said we had no previous experience and told us he would only sublet to someone already operating a few restaurants. It didn’t make sense to us because we thought he just cared about getting money and we could provide financial statements and a personal guarantee to him. But he refused to budge and told us it wouldn’t work out.

So much for the city of brotherly love, huh? This was the first taste of rejection due to our lack of experience and it was frustrating, but we know we will be dismissed many times down the road so it was a good reminder to experience it early on. At the end of the day, we can’t let these challenges get us down and we have to keep looking ahead for new opportunities.

-Artina

The journey begins...

Your heart is free. Have the courage to follow it.

-- William Wallace, Braveheart

This is the story of three friends traveling the road of entrepreneurship. Do we have what it takes to run a successful business? Can we leverage our unique skill sets to thrive in an industry where we have little experience? Only time will tell...

Hi. My name is Artina Sheikh and I invite you to join us as we embark on this exciting adventure of opening our first restaurant 9 months from now. I hope to update this blog regularly to keep you in the loop and share lessons we learn along the way. I'd also love to hear from you if you have comments, questions, and especially suggestions.

Before I tell you more about the restaurant, let me introduce my team. Amir Memon currently works at a private equity firm in Boston, MA. He has experience in the worlds of finance and strategy/management consulting, but is always dreaming up new business ideas in his spare time. Saffron Grill is a product of his creative thinking and many late nights of ordering food in while at work, but more on that later. Amir graduated from the University of Pennsylvania which is where we met. As for me I am 23 years old and work in the online advertising industry. Amir and I got married 4 years ago and I’ve been pushing him to take this leap of faith ever since. I am incredibly excited that we are finally making a move and am confident that Amir can lead us to success in this venture.

Our third teammate is a Harvard alum Nick Pike, a friend of Amir’s, who brings a unique perspective to Saffron Grill. He embodies all of the characteristics of our target market and believes that our idea has legs. As you may have gathered by now the three of us have no firsthand experience in the restaurant industry, but we hope to bring an unmatched level of professionalism and business-savvy in running Saffron Grill.

So what exactly is Saffron Grill? I won’t be able to describe all the details of our concept just now, but our goal is to open a chain of fast-casual restaurants to share the world of kabobs with people. Kabobs come in various shapes and forms and span several ethnic cuisines, namely the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Mediterranean cultures. From our research we have seen most of these restaurants in the U.S. lack mass appeal or are too exclusive to the elite. We want to make kabobs accessible to the average American who is turned off by the hole-in-the-wall immigrant-run shop, and not looking to empty his/her pockets to experience the cuisine at a fine-dining restaurant. We want kabobs to be as convenient to enjoy as burgers, tacos, or pizza is today.

-Artina