Ashish Tulsian:

Hi, welcome to Restocast. Today my guest is Nadine Benchaffai. As an entrepreneur, Nadine has done everything from being a brand manager, marketing some of the most popular FMCG products in the world, to co-founding Tortilla Mexican Grills, a company that opened 50 stores in the UK and went IPO a couple years back, to finding Taqado Mexican Kitchen in the UAE. She completed the circle because she made a successful exit for Taqado last year. As an entrepreneur, she’s now helping the agri-startups find their way into the world, also extrapolating her experiences not only with the restaurant, but mostly from farm to their commercialization. I found Nadine somebody who of course does not give up, like one of the most important traits of all entrepreneurs, but in her own story, somebody who is calm in the eye of the storm. There were multiple instances in a story where I could clearly feel that, oh, she’s going to say, hey, and this happened and we were all over the place. But what she instead said is, yeah, I was sitting there and this happened. You’re going to see a lot of these instances where you could hear that in that time of trouble, or turmoil, or crisis, or something not going their way, Nadine’s calmness won the situation over. There’s a lot to learn from her. I did, and I’m sure you’re going to enjoy that too. Nadine, welcome to Restrocast.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Ashish Tulsian:

Thank you for allowing us to do this. Nadine, my belief is that, or rather it’s a thesis, and I say this a lot of times, that people don’t, nobody gets into the restaurant industry or food beverage industry by choice or by plan. They generally fall into it, and they call it dive later, but they actually fall into it. That was at least my story. I want to know where did it all start? What were the formative years like, and how did you come here?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah, so for me, I was always interested in food. I don’t know, I think from earlier. I started my career in FMCG. I started at Kraft, which is Mandela’s, of course, foods, and working in the Middle East. I managed different brands, marketing side, traveled a lot to the region, and then after that, not wanting to become a Middle East branded marketeer, moved into Nestle, kind of European strategy. Not as much fun, very too much politics.

Ashish Tulsian:

What do you mean by not willing to get branded as a Middle East?

Nadine Benchaffai:

So I was in the UK, and so from a marketing, so they didn’t consider marketing in this part of the world as serious enough. Yeah, that’s the, you know.

Ashish Tulsian:

Why so?

Nadine Benchaffai:

And I don’t know why, because actually you got to do so much more than you would ever do in a UK marketing team. So I got to do, you know, I got to work on TV campaigns, on print campaigns, you’re talking to the distributors all the time, you’re coming up with promotions, like you have so much more leeway, and I was working on all the brands. So you get to do a little bit of, you know, mayonnaise, a bit of Tang. Tang was a big one in those days, not as much anymore, you know, but also like Cote d’Or, and Milka, so you’ve got a like a really kind of wide range of different customer audiences, target markets, and strategies. And you had full responsibility of your P&L, which is something that, you know, Mondale was quite obsessive about, you know, you couldn’t sell a single thing at a loss. So yeah, so I mean, so for me that was kind of like my instructive, I guess, years. And I worked with a lot of very smart, kind of American style, very American style, so very, you know, get the job done. I don’t kind of care how you get it done, just get it done. But also, yeah, a lot of MBAs, it’s probably influenced me later on when I chose to do my MBA, it was actually probably from that point. But you’re when you’re sitting in meetings, and you’re, you know, you hear somebody, and you go, wow, that’s really smart, like, you’re learning, right? Every, and they also had a philosophy where the most junior person, so if somebody presented an advertising pitch, the most junior person is the first to comment.

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, wow.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Always, which is quite nerve wracking.

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, wow.

Nadine Benchaffai:

So they present you a storyboard, and you have the brief that they’ve been given. So you have to be very objective, right, according to the brief, right? And you’re literally like, I’m going to be the first person, I’m going to be the first person that’s going to come out with, you know, and so actually makes it easy, because it gives you something to comment. So you’ve got the first, you know, and then obviously, you’re like, I better not say something.

Ashish Tulsian:

I’m going to steal that. That’s awesome. Actually, that’s very interesting.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah, so one is a pretty good induction, because you’re not forgotten in the room.

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah.

Nadine Benchaffai:

You know, you’re not just there taking notes. And you’re not going to speak after somebody and disagree with them, potentially. So yeah, you just, you know, come in and, and it was really so I used to, we used to do practice pitches where, you know, I had a really good first boss, and you know, she’d mentioned, and she gets right, here’s, here’s a pitch.Here’s the brief. What’s your first comment? Okay, you know, but it’s a really good way to be objective and not have not get distracted by things that actually aren’t in the brief. So when you’re working with agencies, actually, it’s really important, because they might just if they haven’t given you what you want, it just means you didn’t give them a good enough description. You know, you weren’t specific enough in what you wanted. Yeah, then after that, I went to Nestle Purina, which was on, which is on dog food. So I was working on friskies, European strategy. I don’t know, it was a 17 countries. Yeah, if you want to know what’s wrong with the EU, just working there, you’d have all the different politics. Each country had their own. Yeah, one country is like Italy would be really creative. And yeah, each, you know, you’re working with different cultures.

Ashish Tulsian:

But but like, can you can you dive into it a little? Like, you know, so you are responsible for what across what 17?

Nadine Benchaffai:

For the friskies brand, and innovation for that brand across Europe. For you know, so it was kind of the innovation kind of hub. And yeah, we were at one point, we were trying to launch dog food, for example, in Tetra packaging, which was a whole new innovation. But it just it didn’t have the same caliber of people. So I’d kind of gone from these like Stanford’s kind of super, like, you know, very smart people to like, just the politics kind of of it all. And you know, and did you but did you ask this person first? And did you fill in that form first? And, and yeah, you just kind of, you know, I think we had like a three year strategy where the brands were still losing money. And it was just like, shocking, because obviously, you know, when you come from one, you can sell a single thing that lost money. It was like, how, how does this work? So it was crazy. But you know, it’s like you’re at the number two, you think the number one is going to be because Nestle is number one worldwide. And then you go, actually, it’s not green. So then I moved to UK innovation, which is under Yoplait. Which was interesting. I’ve got to which was Petit Falou. So it was all the kind of mainly a lot of it was Petit Falou. And that’s kind of that was their biggest brand there. But again, yeah, we had, we had an issue where France, our parent was doing really badly, was being hammered by Danone. And we had two UK factories that were losing money because they were just producing for a label for Tesco’s. And so you’ve got this point where you’re like, I can’t really innovate anything because I have ridiculous minimum runs. And France is trying to clear its own house up. And I can’t make anything out of our own factories because we just won’t make money. And so after a while, I kind of thought I was kind of looking at the marketing director’s job. And I don’t really see myself being there in five years, you know. And that’s kind of when I applied to do my MBA. And I remember once when actually in the craft days, sitting next to the head of our region at a dinner. And he said to me, you know, you know, you’re still young. And if I were you, I would go do my MBA. You know, he was and he went to London as a school. That’s where I ended up applying. Yes, I did that. That’s what I did. But don’t do what I did. And don’t go back to a corporate life. Go do your, you know, go the entrepreneurship route. And so, yeah, so I kind of thought, well, I always wanted to kind of do my own thing eventually. And thought, well, at least an MBA will kind of one, give me the network and two, kind of give you a toolkit of all the things that you don’t feel as confident on.

Ashish Tulsian:

Is that true?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yes. So in my case, you know, so if I look back, so obviously, so network, even when I came here, most of my partners were LBS connected. So, for sure. And even till now, like the network is very strong. If somebody contacts you from that or if you contact them and they can see you, you know, it’s like you see somebody, it’s like you get a LinkedIn invite. If you see that they’re an alumni, you’re going to accept. It’s like, you know, you’re not going to. So the network is really strong. And it is a toolkit. Like if you’d asked me before, you know, come up with a P&L and a cash flow and a balance sheet, make your balance sheet balance, I never would have done it, you know. So it makes you do the things that you didn’t necessarily enjoy. I was great in marketing and think about, you know, the other areas that you need to think about. And it is a toolkit. So, you know, if you’re evaluating a business, you know, what are all the things you need to look at and your market sizing and target audience, like your usual. So and look here, and then when we went to and then food, how we get into food, I certainly was one of our, so my class, so I went to my MBA, and my class is about 30% North Americans. So I have a lot of American, a few Canadians, but a lot of American classmates who kept saying there’s no decent Mexican in London. And, and then a couple of them did kind of the second year project on it, one of the professors and we used to all sit together, we joked here in the back row. And then we and I said, Oh, how hard can it? How hard can it be? We’ll do it, you know. So I was following on the Chipotle model. And that’s kind of how, you know, and then, so once we graduated, Brandon, whose founder came, you know, said, Hey, can you, I’m thinking of giving this a go said, Okay, well, I’ll help you on the marketing side and the branding side. I’ll invest some money and my family invested some money. And, you know, and then later on got roped into doing a bit more and joined as executive director. And I said, like, you know, I’ll, I’ll be much more, I’ll be more hands on until, you know, for the fundraising and getting us getting the first door open. And then after that, what was it called? Tortilla.

Ashish Tulsian:

Tortilla. And that was in London.

Nadine Benchaffai:

In London, it’s the same as the tortilla here. The tortilla here is a franchise. And, yeah, it took two of the most painful years was believe it £450,000. And it’s painful fundraising. But yeah, I would probably say what 80% of it was LBS late, kind of in terms, you know, it’s kind of, you know, your net, that’s the network. Yeah, we launched the first store. And then that was it, people got it. And then, you know, I think there are more than 60 stores now. So they’re the largest in Europe.

Ashish Tulsian:

So you were the, you were the founding.

Nadine Benchaffai:

So I was in the founding team. I’d committed to stay on. So we did the first store. I stayed as an executive director.

Ashish Tulsian:

What year was that?

Nadine Benchaffai:

So we started working on it in 2005. The first store didn’t really launch until I think it was like 2006, 2007. And then I left the board in 2009 once I was here.

Ashish Tulsian:

And once we got private equity money. And Tortilla is still like a Chipotle model? Or is it like, has it?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah, similar. It’s the same.

Ashish Tulsian:

Is it?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Okay. Californian.

Ashish Tulsian:

No, but is it like the format is also Chipotle?

Nadine Benchaffai:

It is the same. It’s the same. It’s, you know, it’s the same as you would see here.

Ashish Tulsian:

Interesting. You know, Chipotle entered UK?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yes, yes, yes.

Ashish Tulsian:

Last year?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Or two years back? No, no. Yeah, a few years back. A few years back. But they still, they couldn’t. Yeah, we’re still ahead. I’m still an investor. You can confidently say we’re still ahead. Because I think some of these US models, when they go into Europe, they want to keep doing it the exact same way. And so they came in at a, you know, almost 10 pound price point, you know, eight, nine pound price point, whereas we came in at a five pound price point. And then they came in with American size burritos, which the UK is just not really used to. They don’t need 800 grams.

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, yeah. Portion size is like, yeah.

Nadine Benchaffai:

So, so I think we kind of address that better. So yeah, that’s so yeah, yeah, accidental, in a way I had no plans to, to kind of really.

Ashish Tulsian:

But what was your, like, what were these? These are these are four formative years of Tortilla, right? You’re talking about 2005 to 2009, right? And what were you, what was your contribution? You said fundraising, you were?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah, so fundraising. We were working trying to get real estate, bringing in some advisors that basically could bulk up. So the biggest challenge. So fundraising was one challenge. And then actually, the other biggest challenge is real estate. And the two kind of go hand in hand, because you’re guys giving you money, you want to know where it is. And in those days, well, not just in those days, UK in general, they it’s not like here, they want a safe tenant. So, so if you go and you bid for a site, Pratt might bid 30% less than you, but they will get the site because they’re not worried about. So the last thing they want is an empty tenant or something that goes bust. It’s not here, it’s whoever can pay the most, you know, it’s a very different way. And so it was so when you’re new, it really is hard to find the site with the right level of traffic, you know, and I remember like, I recall in those days, I think we’d like mapped out wasabi was one of the bigger ones, it’s not as strong anymore. But at the time, you know, it was like, where were the Pratt sites? Where were the wasabi sites? You know, where are like the, so you kind of tried to go right, these are the hotspot areas that we want to be in and try to kind of go after it. And then the first one ended up being Islington, which kind of unluckily for us, we had, we knew there was a competitor that called Chalangos that was planning to launch at the same time. And they beat us to it in launching. And then they and they launched, I think it was about 400. They end up taking a site after us, like 400 feet away from our site. So it really was like the worst.

Ashish Tulsian:

Was it a coincidence or?

Nadine Benchaffai:

We consequently bought them after when they went into liquidation. But, you know, so it all ends well. But yeah, in those, so they, they launched under another brand just to get in fast and to get some learnings, wasted, obviously, a ton of investors money, and then relaunched themselves, crowdfunded, lost that money. And yeah, not the best, but they, they, but yeah, I mean, it was just kind of like, you’re so excited to finally launch and then you kind of get, oh, for God’s sake, they’re like, like, you know, they launched, you know, down the road, but you just have to focus on what you’re doing, right? And just say, right, we need to know our operations. And that’s what Brandon was really good at, right? It was, everybody wanted a restaurant, a chef. So when we kept getting turned down, because they wanted somebody with restaurant experience. And I got to the point where I was like, for God’s sake, this is becoming ridiculous. So there was a place that we used to always go and eat. And I think it was a Hilton hotel, actually, is that we used to kind of go eat in there. And we got to know the manager who was running it really well. And so I said, listen, do you want to come and just be an advisor and just be on the team? Because we just keep getting asked, and it’s just getting ridiculous. We just need to tick this box. So he joined for, and he would come to some meetings where we really needed him. But generally, he was, you know, the tick that we kind of needed to have. So yeah, so I’d helped bring him on board, brought in, we brought in an advisor, who through various other intros that I’d met, who would then help us actually get real estate, which was really helpful. Worked on the branding. You know, we did go to an agency to do the whole branding thing and then abandon the name.

Ashish Tulsian:

How did that go?

Nadine Benchaffai:

We didn’t like the name. So we ended up going with, you know, people might argue was a boring name in the end. But we just kind of decided, you know what, we’ll just stick. It’s safe. Really, we had a huge debate on, do we call them burritos? Or do we call them wraps? Because Mexican food had a really bad reputation in the UK before that. It was the place where you go get drunk and you didn’t know what you had. It was known for that.

Ashish Tulsian:

Was it a Taco Bell?

Nadine Benchaffai:

It wasn’t a Taco Bell. No, it wasn’t even it was, you know, I think Taco Bell had gone in and gone out at one point, but it just was.

Ashish Tulsian:

Anyway, Taco Bell is not Mexican. It’s more, it’s more.

Nadine Benchaffai:

It was your, you know, it was your typical places where you’re going for tequila shots and refried beans. And, you know, you’re not really there for the food. You’re there for an experience, you know, experience and drinking. And, you know, so. But on the so so in the restaurant side, Mexican was almost, you know, tiny. But on the retail side, they were actually quite sizable from an ethnic food section. So like meal kits, so like Mexican meal kits and things like that actually did quite well. So you could see there was a gap between what people really wanted. And maybe it was so, you know, because people say, well, maybe that’s just a few people don’t want it. And we’re like, no, no, but there is a demand. It’s just not replicated in the restaurant side. And then, yeah, we had some old school investors who said, well, people just like their bland sandwiches. We were saying, you know, who wants to keep eating bland sandwiches when you can get it customized? You know, wow. But yeah, so some people said, no, we like our bland sandwiches.

Ashish Tulsian:

So how did that go? How was like, like was the first store a roaring success or you had your own success?

Nadine Benchaffai:

I wouldn’t say it was like crazy, like crazy, but it hit the targets that we needed to hit. London is not like here, like the numbers are on a different level and the traffic and the pacify, but it did what it needed to do. And it made money. And there and typically, you know, I think in most places you need three sites to cover your overheads when you’re doing, when you’re launching, because people always think they can launch the first site and then they’re just making money. And we’re kind of saying when you do a chain, when you put in all your other corporate overheads, you typically need at least three. 

Ashish Tulsian:

At a corporate level.

Nadine Benchaffai:

To cover your, yeah, to cover all your costs. So, but for us, it was just getting the concept through for people to understand it, see it, know that we can execute it. So that was the first, first one. And then, yeah. And then we, and then we, I mean, we’ve been lucky, maybe overly cautious. I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s served Tortilla well when COVID hit round, but very cautious in the sites that we take that they, you know, that they then took on. I would have probably been a little bit more.

Ashish Tulsian:

Consumers?

Nadine Benchaffai:

No, I’d probably been a little bit more aggressive in, in some of the sites, but I think, you know, it served them probably well in terms of, so they, we were always obsessed with getting really good sites in the city, but then you realize you’re talking literally five day lunchtime traffic and nothing else. And so actually when you put in like the heavy rents and everything and stuff.

Ashish Tulsian:

But isn’t, isn’t that, isn’t that the, yeah, but isn’t that the, you know, curse of the concept, because, you know, and I’m, I’m just thinking about, let’s say Chipotle in my head, let’s say all across, all across us. I think the concept is comfort food and concept is quick. And, you know, by that logic, you want it to be on the high street, very, very accessible, which will almost always mean high rentals and it’s comfort food. So it can be costly.

Nadine Benchaffai:

So it means margins are going to be, yeah, we weren’t billing it as comfort food though. I think we were billing it as almost like the new, the new generation in terms of on the health wise. So you’re making it so it’s not, it’s fast, but it’s not fast food. If that makes sense. It’s just, you know, we can still deliver it fast, but it’s good. So it’s like how Nando’s is versus your KFC.

Ashish Tulsian:

Right. Sure.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Right. So saying like, it’s none of the ingredients are bad.

Ashish Tulsian:

Correct.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Nothing that’s really fried. We didn’t have refried beans. We didn’t have, so all the ingredients are healthy. So actually, if you want a better quality, freshly made that you can customize. So it’s not about, I want this, but can you remove that, it’s no, you just pick what you want.

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah.

Nadine Benchaffai:

You know, so it was that it’s the combo of the full. So for some people who didn’t like Mexican or just thought, oh no, it’s too spicy. I’m like, just, just go pick what you want. It doesn’t need to be, it can be spicy if you want it. And that’s the appeal, right. That you can, especially when we launched here, it can appeal to those who want it quite bland versus to those who will be like, can you add more jalapenos? Can you make it spicier?

Ashish Tulsian:

And four years of you, you know, building that like until 2009, when you moved out, how many stores did you guys work?

Nadine Benchaffai:

I think they got to about six or so stores. And we had a private equity partner that came in at that point. And that’s kind of when we had to restructure from a, from a board perspective. And so when I moved here in 2008, the plan was to bring Tortilla out here. Just by virtue of me coming over basically.

Ashish Tulsian:

But why did you move?

Nadine Benchaffai:

We moved because look, it was after, I think after 9-11 and also after the 7-7, which was kind of the UK bombings, you know, I’d say Islamophobia was on a all time kind of high. Your job prospects were not kind of what they were, you know, my, my husband’s name is Muhammad. So you’re suddenly getting job interviews and you didn’t even get job interviews, right? Just so it was a tough time. And, and I think we were ready for a change. I’d finished my MBA. I had a lot of classmates who had come out straight to Dubai at that time. I mean, I wish I had come out 2005. It would have been like the perfect time to kind of be here right at the beginning, right? Instead we came in 2008, just as it was kind of about to kind of come off the cliff at that time. But yeah, so we were ready for a change. The kids were, we had two young kids.

Ashish Tulsian:

But that must be, that must be hard. Like that’s what you’re telling me is like, I mean, I can only imagine the time.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian:

I mean, was it, was it a little unsettling, especially because you were not, as I’m, you know, hearing it, this is not really a decision purely, you know, out of, you were in your comfort somewhere and then.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah, I mean, like I was in my comfort zone, you know, and we had help and everything and, you know, but I think for the kids, we thought it would be a good change. My husband, I was like, we were coming out for two years. We weren’t coming out to stay. That wasn’t the plan. So it was, you know, come out for two years. I remember my, my husband was offered a permanent contract and he was like, no, no, no. I’ll just do a two year contract. You know, it’s, he was, he’s like, no, no, we’re just going to try it out and see. Yeah, the plan wasn’t to kind of say it, but it was, let’s make a change. Let’s come and see. And yeah, so when I first came, we were thinking, right, we can bring Tortilla over, we can work as a franchise. So, so I would kind of help them manage that here. And I remember, you know, we were, you know, going, trying to, we had meetings set up with all these kind of big hospitality groups who were literally getting fired. Like in the week we were like out there to meet them. So I think like half of Lakhil hospitality’s team at the time got fired. Half of like all these groups.

Ashish Tulsian:

Why?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Because it was 2000, the end of 2008.

Ashish Tulsian:

Like the down, the recession.

Nadine Benchaffai:

It was getting the downturn and you know, all these teams were getting laid off. So it was just, so we parked it. So like, it’s just not.

Ashish Tulsian:

There’s nothing to do with this part of the world, right? This was all the, like the global meltdown.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah. We were just, we were just late, right? We were always like the, you know, there’s always a lag for here, right? So we caught it like the year after everyone else did. So, so yeah, so that, so it wasn’t the best time. So we said, look, let’s just, let’s just pause it. And I started working on another project with another ex LBS alumni, funnily enough, just a small world, um, on doing this like family club in Suffolk park. So you see there’s that big dome that looks like a spaceship, that building. So the plan was to take this building and do like a family membership style club. So really more for working mothers more than anything. So where you could, you know, the kid could be in the nursery after the school activities where everyone plays. So it was take, it was addressing the pains, I guess, that we felt as mothers trying to work, but then running around between one off school activity here, this, there, that, there. And how do we address that and bring it into one place? And how do we also solve a real estate solution? So every room had a double use and all of that kind of aspect. So, so that was what we worked on for almost, I think almost two years. Um, it was, you know, and literally as we got it ready, I remember going into the parks authority, you know, building and, and he goes, Oh, I don’t know. I’ve got, you need to look at this. And he was the map of the route for the canal.

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, and all the water.

Nadine Benchaffai:

kind of aspect. So that was what we worked on for almost, I think almost two years. It was, you know, and literally as we got it ready, I remember going into the Parks Authority you know, building, and he goes, oh I don’t know, I’ve got, you need to look at this. And he had this map and it was the map of the route for the canal and all the works, all the roadworks. He goes, we just got all the roadwork plans and literally went through this like section right through where our playground was going to be.

Ashish Tulsian:

And you were working on this concept for two years without them, like not in consultation with them?

Nadine Benchaffai:

No, no, we were working with them, but we didn’t know, right? You didn’t know exactly the routes of what they, like you knew there was a canal coming, but you don’t really know like what that means, what RTA is going to close, you don’t know like, you know, that it’s literally that area that’s like a little bit of a, the weirdest fly over, like go in the opposite direction. So yeah, so we, you know, we just went, you know, we spent money to get that far and everything. And so yeah, we just had to, you know, we just had to park it. Again, so that’s the life of an entrepreneur, right? You work on these things and some things, sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t work out. And then, but out of that, and you know, you know, and I was working with one of our partner who I had met, who I’d known from LBS and met, and so he said, oh look, I’ve just been, and he didn’t really do F&B at the time, but he said, look, I’ve been sent this concept by somebody. And it was like an Arabic version of tortilla almost. And I said, well, why don’t you just do tortilla? And, you know, we, you know, the people, you know, the team, I was, you know, and he said, okay, why not? You know, and so, you know, this is now 2011 almost, so it’s, and he, you know, and he brought various other team members and, you know, I don’t mention them all, they were pretty high profile, pretty, I had a pretty good team of investors behind me, I have to say, I was really lucky when people kind of say, how did you get them? I’m like, it’s just, you know, the network. And so we put a team together and they said, yeah, we want to do, right, we’re going to put this much amount of money and we’re going to, you know, let’s target eight, nine stores and, you know, let’s put a plan. And we did a mini presentation, we sent it to MAF, we sent it to DIFC, and the DIFC site over the week, over a weekend, I think on a Friday, no, it was on Thursday, today’s the weekend, so Friday, Saturday, so get a call on a Thursday saying, they said to me, so DIFC was showing me sites that were huge, and I said, listen, I need a thousand, thousand, five hundred to go for it, I need a unit, and they said, which unit? And I was like, this unit, and, you know, I was very specific, which unit? And then they said, and then over the weekend, somebody said, oh, the guys are selling that unit, the guys in that unit are trying to want some key money, because of our contacts, we’ve got to write a first refusal, but we need to, we need to do it this weekend. So I was like, go see it, get the others, you know, got a couple of the other investors to go see it, and then, yeah, Monday we signed an MOU, taking it over alongside the company, it was insane, it was like, and we didn’t have an agreement with Tortilla yet, which was comical, because we had a private equity group about to come in, and they were very, you know, busy with what they wanted, and then they said, we’re not ready to franchise.

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh.

Nadine Benchaffai:

You know, it’s too early to franchise, we’re not ready to franchise. So, suddenly it’s like, okay, and then MAF came out of the blue, who don’t normally give a new concept a store. They normally, like, the reputation of MAF at the time was, certainly from all of the Emirates, they’re not going to give a newbie. So either you come with that, you know. So, yeah, so we go to a meeting in MAF, and they said, don’t worry, they’re just going to, you know, it’s just an intro meeting. And he goes, yeah, I’ve got a unit for you, and this is the unit, and we can hand it over to you in two weeks, and you need to open in, you know, in July. It’s like, okay. And so, now you’re without a brand. And you don’t have one site, you have two sites.

Ashish Tulsian:

Two sites, and perfect sites.

Nadine Benchaffai:

One that you’ve paid for, and one that you now are under, like, they’ve lit a fire under you, you know, to do. So, it was a bit insane. I said, okay, fine, did it before. I mean, it’s not, you know, we’ll figure it out. And that’s kind of, I think, in those moments, you can’t stress or panic. You just, you know, I remember just sitting with the investors, and we said taco, avocado, that’s how we came with Taqado. That was, you know, with a queue, so it looked better, and was available as a dot com. So we’re like, there you go. Always.

Ashish Tulsian:

That’s always the idea.

Nadine Benchaffai:

You know, so it’s like, it looks better with a queue than a C. And, you know, and so that’s kind of how it went. And we had to redo all these presentations to send back to Matt to say, by the way, you know, we pitched you, you wanted a tortilla, it’s not actually going to be that. And they were fine. So, we ended up opening our first store in, yeah, more of the Emirates. That was 2012? Yeah, yeah. So we so I did, you know, so I remember going back to, to Brandon has found a tortilla and said, look, you know, and he was really upset that, you know, we can franchise it out and stuff. And, and, and I said, Listen, I’m not reinventing the wheel here. I don’t have time. Now I’m really like, you know, so you might see some familiar things. And he joked later, and he goes, Okay, I get what you mean. In terms of some of the colors and some of that, because, you know, we’ve done so much research on some of these things before, what would work and what wouldn’t work. So I said, Listen, I’m not recreating the wheel, I don’t have the time. You know, and we got an agency to do our branding. And yeah, and that’s, that’s the it was it was baptism by fire.

Ashish Tulsian:

So did you open the IFC as well?

Nadine Benchaffai:

We opened the IFC, it took us almost a year after, actually, because I think, we just, you know, you have no team, you’re building a team from scratch.

Ashish Tulsian:

So what was your role at Takago?

Nadine Benchaffai:

This time, like, everything.

Ashish Tulsian:

This time you were more hands on?

Nadine Benchaffai:

This was everything.

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah, no, this was my baby. So this time I had to like, you know, from dealing with landlords, we hired, don’t know if you ever remember the days of Yale, she used to run Baker and Spice. She’s the founder of, she’s the founder of Baker and Spice, actually, everywhere before even in the UK. And she’s the founder of Gail’s, Gail’s coffee shops. And so I’d met her and said, Listen, can you help us come up with the food? Can you do some recipes? And she did some amazing recipes, but just impossible to replicate. And I said, I can’t have an exec chef in every restaurant. It needs to be idiot proof. And then, and then she recommended some GM that I’d work for her. And that’s kind of how we hired Tim. I think he was based in Bali, maybe at the time, I don’t know. So he came over. And, you know, also hiring people and, you know, working out. His wife at the time, Liz was a chef. And so she kind of helped change some of the recipes to make them, you know, adapt them a bit so that we could work. And, yeah, I mean, it was just, you know, go find a fit out contractor and stuff. It’s just all the, you know, go find out bank, you know, obviously, we don’t have a bank account. And then, you know, we’re all having to pay things ourselves until we can get the bank account and all of the usual drama.

Ashish Tulsian:

So the partner you had here, you know, were they the investors or were they the operators?

Nadine Benchaffai:

No, no, they’re investors. I mean, that’s it. It was for us, it was, that’s it. It’s a homegrown brand. We’re doing it ourselves. You know, for me, the point of having Tortilla was to be able to take a lot of their systems and a lot of the recipes and a lot of those things so that it would just make our life a little bit easier. And the advantage to them was that they would have kind of a former founder who’s a friendly voice is far more forgiving in the things that they, if they don’t deliver the support that they need to deliver, or how did they get their package of support kind of figured out, right? So this is like a safe way.

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, would have been a great experiment.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah, it would have been great kind of both sides, it would have been a safe because there’s an understanding, right? So that would have been a safe environment to do that. I mean, look at it, you know, it is what it is. But I think it gave us, it gave us on the flip side, it gave us a lot of flexibility to do a lot of cheeky things with the branding that we couldn’t really do in the UK. We could be, Mexican food didn’t have the image that it had in the UK. So we could be much more Mexican. And we could be a lot more, you know, tongue in cheek and a little bit more, you know, not always philosophically correct. And we could just do a lot of the things that we can do. We launched quesadillas well before because we just didn’t have the same, you know, there were a lot of things that we could do that we didn’t have.

Ashish Tulsian:

You could write, you could write your own.

Nadine Benchaffai:

You could do whatever you want. You know, the challenge with Tecada was just that, you know, from the investor side and the excitement side, you’re always being offered sites. And it was, you know, looking back, it’s the time where I should have, there are certain sites, there are certain sites, even some good sites where we should have probably just said no, because we need time to, you know, and I did remember sitting with investors at one point, and they kind of said, look, it’s a kind of a land grab before anyone other, before a copycat comes in. So you just need to go get sites. But it’s a really expensive way to do it. Because as you know, anything with contractors, nothing goes to plan.

Ashish Tulsian:

Yep.

Nadine Benchaffai:

No fit out goes to plan, everything is delayed. So the money you burn is a hell of a lot more than if you were taking your time, you know, and we’re a small team, we’re always like we’re a startup, right? So always under constantly under resourced, right, running around trying to do things. But that’s just, you kind of have to be used to the chaos.

Ashish Tulsian:

How was the Takara journey? Like, like to what, you know, next few years? How did it go? What is it today?

Nadine Benchaffai:

It was, it was a little bit insane. I think we got to 18 stores in UAE, in the UAE.

Ashish Tulsian:

Wow.

Nadine Benchaffai:

And then I think we’ve had it down a little bit.

Ashish Tulsian:

When you say UAE, you mean what?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Ashish Tulsian:

18 is a good number. It’s quite a coverage.

Nadine Benchaffai:

It’s good, especially when you’re quite niche. So that’s the problem with what we were doing was that we’re not burgers.

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah.

Nadine Benchaffai:

And we’re not shawarma. So you know, so you’re always quite niche.

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah.

Nadine Benchaffai:

And you always needed to go for that expat, quite discerning market, which is just really hard because everybody’s going after it. You know, I used to joke, we’re all going after like seven, 800,000 people. It’s like every new concept that was launching was going after the same people. So that was really the challenge. But yeah, I mean, you know, we had by and large most stores as well. I mean, but you know, you get to that point where you’re like, it, it needs to not just do a little bit well, it needs to be do really well to be worth the effort. So, you know, so the point where we, you know, we had 18 and then you’re like, okay, you know what? That store might be profitable, but it’s just not worth the effort. It’s the profit is too low for the extra complex, complexity adds to the business and supporting it. Right. Because sometimes you spend more time trying to fix a store that isn’t doing as well as you want it to versus making improvements and putting more effort into the stores that actually can do infinitely more. And so you have to balance that all the time. So we ended up, I mean, so slowly over time as leases expired and whatever, we kind of started shutting down. I think there’s only one that I think we got catastrophically wrong, which was in Sheikh Zayed Road. And, you know, we were kind of, you know, the sites that you think in those days, if you had one on the Sheikh Zayed Road fronting, I mean, you’re like, yeah, you can’t go wrong.

Ashish Tulsian:

And you’re also having a hoarding for the city, right?

Nadine Benchaffai:

It’s like, well, we can’t go wrong. And I think it was like a worst performing site. That was, you know, that then we were stuck in, I mean, by the time we opened it, it was like, you know, six, nine months late. And then by the time, you know, and then they actually wanted to demolish it was City Tower. And I think they wanted to demolish and refurbish the building anyway. And we were like, well, we weren’t about to renew. So you don’t need to worry about, you know, about us hanging around. But yeah, I mean, it was…

Ashish Tulsian:

So how long did it take you, like to open 18 stores?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Probably within six, seven years, seven years.

Ashish Tulsian:

Until 2017, 18. You know, I have a question there. You know, you correctly said that, that the problem with, you know, niche, you know, Mexican food in this part of the world is that it’s not burgers, it’s not shawarma, right? How do you solve for that? Because people don’t have, like, I mean, I think you’re also alluding to that. Unless a large part of audience in a city where you are, have your cuisine, or your product category, as one of the top three choices, when they think about food, it’s very, very difficult to get to them. And it’s not really, does it? It actually crosses from just brand awareness marketing, like if I’m opening a, you know, shawarma place or a burger place, my problem is that I need to get my brand out, I need to… But when you’re opening a niche, you know, you’re operating in a segment, which is not already the top three food choices, naturally, then your problem is not brand, your problem is education, your problem is, you know, how do you, like, what are the nuances of that?

Nadine Benchaffai:

I mean, which is, which is then an expensive one, right?

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, quite an expensive one. But how does it look like?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Because then you are constantly, like, so we were always in this debate of, you know, because I came from a marketing background, right? So for me, you know, I was always shocked when I would, you know, you know, we had 18 stores, you’d think most people would know us, right? And I’d meet people and they go, what’s that, you know, and you’re kind of like, and we’re not in like, we’re in prominent locations, like, we’re bang in the middle of the IFC, we’re in Dubai mall, you know, we’re at one point, we’re in Dubai airports, then we close that with COVID. But you know, we’re in like, you’re not in small places, like, okay, I mean, like, surely we’re in a mall in the Emirates. I mean, like, come on, how can you still not know? But it isn’t, right? So we definitely had, I think, an awareness challenge. And which that, but it was kind of, you know, which we tried, but you know, we were always, you know, it’s always like, okay, well, how much, how much money do you spend? Like, we didn’t have the money to really go all out. Like, there are times when I think, God, we should have just, you know, saved on so many other things, and just banked a million dirhams and just kind of went out on a proper marketing blitz.

Ashish Tulsian:

But that’s what I’m asking, you know, was it the brand?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Because it doesn’t have to be. Because I always used to say to people, you don’t have to like Mexican to come to us. Like a lot of people, they just, you know, and we were really, and we still are really, we’re cool with the cool kids. I always joke, we’re cool with the cool kids. We are the new generation will more likely know us than the older, kind of than your typical kind of, you know, when we started, we were going up to, you know, 25, 40 to 45, kind of working, you know, early adopters. But now, actually, it’s the teenagers. You know, so I think part of it, whether that was a Kite Beach thing, whereby they being in Kite Beach, that’s something indoctrinated, but you know, all the kids, so I used to get a lot of, you know, my kids get a lot of brownie points, because, you know, mom had this cool brand kind of thing. But yeah, that was always kind of the challenge, I think, for us, is you need to be wary of your expansion, when you’re kind of that you can’t go probably at the pace that we try to go. So you need to kind of take it in steps where you build, you give time to build that awareness and that education.

Ashish Tulsian:

What was that? Like, can you share any story or any example of what did the education look like? Or like, where did you, how did you do that education, if at all? Not the brand marketing.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah, look, the education was, from an education wise, I mean, it’s hard, because you’re always going to be either going through trying to do through PR or other, you know, routes. The education part was trying to say to people, it’s just you get, we were the first where you can custom make a meal. We were the first in the market to do that. And so you’re constantly trying to, you know, drive that message through. And we were to call it Mexican Kitchen. So we were always going to be Mexican. And you couldn’t avoid that, that messaging. But yeah, I mean, it’s really tough when you’re saying kind of how do you do the messaging, because in our days, this is when also all the media was changing, right? The whole social media, you know, we started on Facebook, and then it all moved along. So everything was changing. So finding the right mediums to create awareness and educate were, you know, I could like in our days, really just gone and done some outdoor billboards. We debated, do we go and do some outdoor billboards for that work? Deliveroo, actually, for us was a really good, the launch of Deliveroo in 2017 was actually quite a good mechanism of educating and getting awareness because people who, there were people actually who would come to us through Deliveroo that had never seen us, didn’t know us, and didn’t understand what it was until they could, until they saw how that worked. But I think we have, you know, we had a really long way to go in still in terms of kind of the education. Obviously, since then, we’ve had other concepts come and copy and so many other and then build your own salads and build your own, like so many other things have come that helped. But I think staying relevant, then your opinion is trying to remain cool, when all the new cooler kids come in, in your territory. But I think, yeah, I mean, look, we, how much of it do you, can you change the market and make your market bigger? There is an element of that. But it takes a bit more money than probably than what we had. And then how much of it you have to accept that it’s a relatively niche, that you will always, you’re never going to be a burger. But to try to own your space and grow within your space, kind of slowly, and you can still be a good successful brand, probably just not necessarily, not the kind of levels that, say, Tortilla does in the UK, because the market size is just also radically different.

Ashish Tulsian:

So how many stores do you like to do? What happened after 2018?

Nadine Benchaffai:

So, look, I think by the time we had sold the group, kind of to Kotopi in 2021, we were, you know, Takado had gone down to about 12, 13 stores. So we had slowly exited leases as they were finishing. And then there was obviously a decision on Kotopi’s side of which ones they wanted to keep, which ones they didn’t want to keep.

Ashish Tulsian:

So did you work with Kotopi before?

Nadine Benchaffai:

But it was a, yes, so we did work briefly with Kotopi before. So it was a combo of, it was a combo. So my vision was always that as the market had changed drastically from the whole delivery side angle as well, was that you don’t, you need your bricks and mortar sites in certain locations, but other locations that were quite fragmented, probably didn’t make sense. And you’re probably better off having a virtual kitchen style site. And my other kind of belief was that having to make the numbers work and to really make a business in this part of the world, kind of in this market work, is to have more than one brand. So we had launched Nutribowl, which was kind of the first virtual kind of healthy brand. I don’t know how many have launched, like probably like a hundred have launched since every, you know, it was insane, but it did insane numbers when we were launching.

Ashish Tulsian:

And this was a virtual brand, this was completely online. And was it through Kotopi kitchens or you were doing it through?

Nadine Benchaffai:

No, we did it initially ourselves through our site. So we started launching our own. So we also had Earth Kitchen, which we opened eventually. We’ve got a small store at the IFC. We did a Katsu, Katsu & Co brand. We did like, we started experimenting, trying different things. Some had physical sites, some didn’t. But, I mean, Takara was always going to be the hero. And then we had Park House. So the one thing that came out of that club project was that we had a cafe concept in there. And, you know, that was going to be kind of like Park House. And so we, when we got approached, when they were building that first row block at Kite Beach, we had kind of pitched to do this cafe concept. So we launched Park House and then we took the small unit next to it for Takara. And that was doing a cafe concept. I have to say it took us maybe four years to figure out how, like three, well, it took us a while.

Ashish Tulsian:

What do you mean?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Because it’s customer service. So Takara is a machine. It really is, you know, and you can, Central Kitchen, it’s a combo of Central Kitchen production, but also, you know, guacamole had to be fresh, made on site. So there are certain things that are made on site and certain things that were, you know, but it was a machine.

Ashish Tulsian:

Assembly line.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah, but just operationally in terms of how you’re training your staff and what they need to do, just much more systematic. This was different. This one we had front of house. So you have your front of house staff. You know, we had this whole debate. Do they, do they pay at the table? Do they pay at the counter? Like, you know, your constant things. We were at the beach. It was supposed to be very easygoing picnic style, kind of like easy food, but that’s not what Dubai people, they want to be served and they want to, they want to be at the table and they want to pay at the table. And it’s very different. And then there was the uniqueness of the site itself, which was very breakfast heavy, being on the beach kind of. So we would literally go from being empty or maybe, I don’t know, five people to suddenly having a hundred people in the space of half an hour in one go. And so all those coffee orders in one go. So your barista’s dying on one side, your chef’s getting all the orders in one go. Everybody, you know, so that was the real, like, figuring out how to deliver that menu at that speed and manage all of that.

Ashish Tulsian:

What’s that cafe called?

Nadine Benchaffai:

So it’s Park House. So we launched Park House.

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah. Okay.

Nadine Benchaffai:

And then, and then it became, and then when we merged and we took over Circle Cafe, we, we converted it to Circle Cafe. So it’s still there on Kite Beach, Circle, you know, but it was really, and that was, that took us a while. So that was while we had Tecado. So we saw, so we, you know, we were slowly building the group. And, and then, you know, and the aim was that we would only go in parks and beaches. That was really the plan. But then you realize, problem with parks and beaches is seasonality is an absolute killer.

Ashish Tulsian:

And also I think the days of the week as well, right? Because what will you do the rest of the week?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Well, one, your nighttime becomes really hard. Sure. You’re packed on weekends. Yeah. Well, you’d have weekday people, people would come and work from there, but it’s, yeah, it’s not the same. But just really, really, the seasonality was an absolute killer because, you know, what do you do with your staff? And it’s just really, really tough to manage. So you’d make all this money over winter and then you’d hemorrhage over three months, you know, waiting for things to come back and kite beach had like severe seasonality. It wasn’t kind of like the beach here, but you still got a lot of residential towers that can come down. So, yeah, so that was, that was the tough one, but it took us a while to figure it out. And so when the opportunity came from the Circle management team who didn’t, you know, really want to run Circle at the time. And my belief at the time was we need to be a bigger company. We need to be bigger. So we can really leverage the kind of, we can leverage the brands off each other better. Our buying power gets better. Everything just, you know, goes to a different level and actually leveraging the staff, you know, being able to move stuff around. So from sites that were busy on a weekend to the sites that were busy on a weekday and being able to, so some of the Takado sites were busy on weekdays and not weekends. I mean, you can move their staff to the ones that were really busy on weekends. So that was, and it had taken us so long to figure out Parkhouse and we’d nailed, we kind of felt we’d finally nailed it. We’ve got the costs to where they need to be and, you know, with everything. And we thought, right, okay, so for Circle, it was kind of like an oldie but goldie kind of brand, had a lot of loyalty.

Ashish Tulsian:

Why did you take that, like why did you get that?

Nadine Benchaffai:

So they were looking, so at the time they were, you know, they were looking to sell. We weren’t really in a position to buy, but we kind of all agreed, look, together we can merge. We’ll take over the management and we’ll build, you know, and obviously they’d stay on the board. And then we’d build it into a better group that then actually you’d be in a better position to exit eventually. It just puts you in, you know. So that was the plan, but the plan happened in, you know, March 2020, which is the worst timing on earth. So, yeah, so we took over all these stores and…

Ashish Tulsian:

You took over in March 20?

Nadine Benchaffai:

We took over in March 20, yeah. I remember actually standing in front of all the staff, I think, in Studio City and Circle and, you know, announcing that we’re doing this. And it was the first week of March, you know. And yeah, in a few weeks.

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, COVID was already happening in the world.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah, it was already happening, but people weren’t really, didn’t think it was going to be, you know.

Ashish Tulsian:

I remember first week of March because, yeah.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah, it was, it was, yeah, no, I remember, I mean, I traveled in late February, you know, to, I remember we went on a holiday to Sri Lanka and the guys, the, you know, I remember the immigration guys laughing at our kids because our friends, our friends worked in some of their big companies and like Schlumberger or whatever, and they’d given them masks to wear. And, you know, and obviously only the kids were wearing the masks and they thought it was just fun, right. The kids were wearing the masks and the immigration guy was laughing at what we were doing. These masks, you know, it’s completely unnecessary. I mean, little did we know. That was the end of February, yeah. But, yeah, so we took over. So, yeah, our thinking was we figured out how to run this cafe. We’ve got this cafe with huge loyalty. You know, we’ll rebrand. We’ll take the best of both. And we can then put in place all the things that we’ve learned from an operational perspective. So we can get those numbers working the way they need to work. And the brand had been neglected for a while, so we needed to invest in those stores. But, yeah, the timing just made that an absolute.

Ashish Tulsian:

I think I’m still lost on, like, why did you sell Tukidopi to Kado?

Nadine Benchaffai:

It was a combo of things. So, one, personally, my father passed away in 2021. So I went to the UK. So he got suddenly ill out of, you know, out of nowhere. He was perfectly fine. So I went to the UK in January 2021 to help my mom and, you know, see what he needed. And, you know, then he went through chemo. So it was just a very rare, aggressive form of cancer. And, you know, so and then he passed away in March, so barely two months after. And so between that, I think, so I had the choice. So for me, the point at that time was, you know, so it was two things. COVID really kicked our butts. Like we didn’t, there’s no furlough here. So, you know, we had to shut, you know, at that point, I think I inherited. So when we did everything in total, we had a group of 45 stores between both, including Saudi that we couldn’t even go to. So we’re hemorrhaging there. We can’t even go there. We can’t even figure out how to fix it. Don’t even know the team that well. And luckily, and then we had suppliers. So they had higher debts. One company had a slightly higher debt, but we could have, we would have been fine managing it. But, you know, suddenly you’ve got suppliers who say, I need you to pay me now. Like, how do you want me to pay you now? Like, like pay in full. And it’s like, how do you want me to pay you now? When I have no sales, like sales are down 90%, we’re in like, you know, this is like lockdown. And so, you know, we had to redo all their recipes overnight, bring it into our central kitchen. So that, you know, because they literally blocked us overnight and they did 90% of the food. So, you know, it was insane. And then you’re battling with your staff. Your number one priority is at least to make sure. So we put, you know, we had about 400 or so staff. We said, right, they need to just stay. For those that can just stay home, we’re going to give you a subsistence amount that pays for your rent and everything. And we’re going to send you food every day. So at least, you know, that’s really like what we can do. And even that was higher than the sales that we’re making. So between trying to pay your debts and that. So all of us, all the investors had to pump quite a lot of money to keep things, you know, kind of going. And look, so in 2021, you know, we got the offer, you know, Kutopia had approached us before. And, you know, so we thought, and it was a partnership. So we are actually investors, effectively, it’s a partnership. So we became investors in Kutopia. So it’s not a full exit in the sense of a full exit.

Ashish Tulsian:

It’s like an equity swap?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Exactly. So it was partial, but the majority of it was an equity swap. So we’re partners in Kutopia. I knew the team for a while before. They had a really impressive journey. And they were, you know, on the stratosphere type, you know, growth. And obviously, so they bought Operation Falafel afterwards as well. So, yeah, so we knew the plan. To be honest, I’ve approached them before. I said, well, you should really just buy Toccata. I said, like a long time before, at the time, I think when they’d like raised 60, I was like, you really should just take us now. But yeah, so for me, it’d been like, you know, you’ve been on this journey for 10 years. You have a major impact from a personal side. You know, you’ve got this opportunity to start something new. Or do you double down? The other option was I double down. It was literally one or the other. Either I double down and I effectively buy some of the investors who, you know, I double down and take them out and put more money. Or I just, you know, say, right. We’ve taken it as far as we can take it. We’ve actually we had cleaned it up significantly. Right. So we literally handed them, you know, a nice kind of set of stores over to Kutopi and let them kind of take the journey on. So, yeah, so for me, like between that personal side and everything. And we were still in COVID. I mean, this is early 2021. We still.

Ashish Tulsian:

What is it not or?

Nadine Benchaffai:

You didn’t know. I was like, oh, something happens and there’s some other random new variant comes and we’re back to, you know, I might have to stump out another X whatever to keep this going. Like, at what point do you just say maybe it’s time to make a change? So I just thought, you know what? I’ve been on this journey. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve got some, you know, you know, quite a few investors said, look, we also have a chance to do quite, you know, to do well with Kutopi. So let’s just, you know, take it while it’s there. And, yeah, so we said, OK, fine. Let’s let them take the journey on.

Ashish Tulsian:

How did that go? Like, you know, are you are you involved in Tecada today or are you just, you know?

Nadine Benchaffai:

No, so I was involved. So we had quite a long transition period for about almost a year. So and and I meet, you know, I’m always on call whenever they know, like we had phases. So we’d have phases where I’d meet them every month. And depending on who’s the brand manager, sometimes they’ll say, you know, we’re about to do this. What do you think? Or, you know, is this a good location or not? Or, you know, they’re looking at new sites. Is this one, you know? So, yeah, so I try, you know.

Ashish Tulsian:

How many stores are there today? Locations?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Well, I think they added two more stores. So I’m not sure what that for Tecada they added. I know they added two more stores. Actually, they’ve added. No, I think they added more than that. Actually, they’ve added quite a few more, especially some. They added Town Square. They added Dubai Hills. They’re growing it, which is kind of what I wanted to see. You know, it was nice to give it to a company that has the funding and the ability. And for Circle, like, we really believed in doing kind of community events and doing these arts. You know, like being able to do workshops and things, which they’ve kind of had the ability and the resourcing to kind of see that through. And also to spend money on the stores to kind of upgrade it from a CapEx perspective. So that’s been kind of good. So, yes, I mean, it’s growing and they’re spending money behind the brand. So I think that’s, for me, what’s what I wanted.

Ashish Tulsian:

What’s your exit? Well, like, what’s going to be your exit like, if at all, eventually? Like, how will you?

Nadine Benchaffai:

My exit is their exit. So now you’re invested with Kidopi. I’m an investor there, yeah. So we’re kind of, so, yeah, so we all want it to succeed, right?

Ashish Tulsian:

And you’re still saying that you have your, you know, steak and tortilla as well?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yes, yes. So tortilla IPO’d in 2021.

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, they IPO’d? Oh, nice.

Nadine Benchaffai:

So that was my first chance of exiting in London. So that was the first chance of partial exit. Because when you’re above a certain percentage holding, you’re not allowed to exit. There are certain rules on what you can’t.

Ashish Tulsian:

I mean, till a certain time. Right, yeah.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Well, and then obviously, and then as literally as the time, my luck is amazing. My luck is really just beyond, like, as the time came. Unlock. You know, you had the war and the whole Ukraine and everything and all this other stuff. And suddenly, not a reflection on the company per se, but just the entire market’s values crashed. So now it doesn’t make sense to exit. I probably will stay in there. The company’s numbers are solid. I mean, I think today it’s sitting valued at almost five and a half X, this deal.

Ashish Tulsian:

Five and a half X?

Nadine Benchaffai:

From a valuation perspective.

Ashish Tulsian:

Top line?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Because the market is so low on EBITDA.

Ashish Tulsian:

It will be top line, of course. Yeah, that’s crazy.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Well, you have some that are five and a half X of their sales.

Ashish Tulsian:

I mean, I’m a tech guy, right? Exactly.

Nadine Benchaffai:

I knew you were like top line. I’m like, no, buddy. That’s how low, you know?

Ashish Tulsian:

So it’s really good. Yeah, five and a half X is too low, right?

Nadine Benchaffai:

It’s a very, you know, it’s a solid business. Their growth is good. They’re, yeah, I think it’s a really good team, you know, so.

Ashish Tulsian:

I mean, I’m sorry to cut to that. I mean, I was talking about another tech company yesterday that went IPO in India, a friend of mine. And his company is currently trading today at 91X.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Wow.

Ashish Tulsian:

They’re kind of in our space. I mean, they’re not like in the restaurant space of the hotel side. You know, so some investors were basically asking us that, guys, this is your time to go IPO.

And I funnily just sent a text to someone saying, no, no, no, no, no. And then he sent me the screenshot of that company yesterday. 91X, go. Don’t be in Dubai. Don’t be anywhere else. Go list. And I was like, OK. 91X sounds tempting enough.

Nadine Benchaffai:

So, yeah. 91X is pretty, yeah. No, so look, I mean, I mean, that’s.

Ashish Tulsian:

So you continue to. So you did not sell.

Nadine Benchaffai:

So no, no, I’m still a shareholder entity here in the UK. I’m not involved in any. You know, I just get updates like everyone else. Obviously, I still know the team really well. So I probably get slightly more updates.

Ashish Tulsian:

And you said Tortilla is here?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yes. So they did franchise eventually here. So it was to eathos. Oh, nice. It was a weird one because it was kind of like, I always joked when, you know, when Andy was running it, that we were like frenemies, you know, because it’s like, because he knew I knew so much. But at the same time, we’re technically competitors in this market. But yeah, it’s, they’ve done it.

Ashish Tulsian:

Why didn’t you sell Takara to them? Or why didn’t they buy Takara? Could have been like perfect, no?

Nadine Benchaffai:

I think they did. No, well, look, one, I’m not, I doubt they would have had the money. I don’t. Yeah. Well, you know, I think Kotobi just made more sense in terms of the potential of what Kotobi itself was going. And the belief that, you know, the team can take it where they needed to take it. So and they didn’t. Yeah. And plus, we also had Circle. So there was this mix. I think.

Ashish Tulsian:

Correct.

Nadine Benchaffai:

It’s a catch 22, because Takara would have probably had a few more suitors. But then Circle would have had different suitors. So you got to finding the one that, you know, made sense for both. So yeah, so we had various discussions with quite a few groups at the time. But to be honest, our plan at the time was not to sell. Our plan was, we’re going to take Circle together combined. We’ve done what we can with Takara. We can still grow it. We’re going to take Circle on the back of Circle’s base in Saudi. We can now start taking Takara into Saudi. So we can start growing in Saudi. And at the same time, we clean up and upgrade what Circle was doing. So the numbers start to make sense. And suddenly you’re at a decent, significant business that you can exit. So the plan was, you know, you take it two, three years. Work on cleaning and growing it, restructuring it, and then give it over to somebody. COVID just completely kind of, you know, completely put a stop to that. So yeah, so our plan, so even when actually we weren’t really looking, we weren’t looking to exit because we knew the market’s not great. And this isn’t the best time. But yeah, so they, you know, but they knew and they knew quite a lot. You know, we knew them quite well. And so it made sense.

Ashish Tulsian:

What today? What’s up now?

Nadine Benchaffai:

So look, so what when, so I kept, I kept a foot in the restaurant side. So we always had Ella’s, which is a licensed unit on the Palm. It was kind of an experiment that we did, you know, a few, you know, four or five years ago, five years ago. Actually, no, no. Yeah, it was four years ago. We launched it literally in 2019. And then we had COVID. But miraculously, it still did really well. You know, I think when, because everything became community based, that’s the advantage. So any places that were in a community and people are working from home and, you know, actually did really well. So we took and then we launched a new concept called The Strand on Palm Views West. Licensed slightly a bit more bigger, a little bit more upmarket, slightly more upmarket. But still, you know, we’re going for the mid-level licensed. We’re trying to be the affordable. So Ella’s will have like a pizza and wine for 55 dirhams. You know, always reasonable. We’re trying, we’re not going out to compete with the, you know, with the Sushi Sambas of the world. That’s, you know, there’s enough people doing that and doing it really well. So there’s just, you know, it’s not our area. So we’re staying. So, yeah, so we’ve got The Strand and then we have the first licensed in TCOM Innovation Hub. So that will be in Cornelius. So only homegrown and partly because I had the team that wanted to carry on and do this. And I kind of just work more with landlords, some ideas on what to do and some of the branding and, you know, trying my hardest to stay as much out of it as I possibly can. But it’s always a it’s always a tough one.

Ashish Tulsian:

As an entrepreneur, was it liberating in some way when, you know, you finally got relieved from like when you handed over to Kitopi?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian:

I mean, what were the emotions? What were the feelings? Because now you you build something, you brought it to a certain point. It’s off your hands. You have the luxury of hindsight, you know, now and you also see somebody else taking over and executing. So you can also see your own, you know, mistakes and or good things and the bad things, both actually quite clearly. And then you have a way ahead, you know, you know, path ahead, which is kind of lit up with all the learnings and all the hindsight wisdom. As an entrepreneur, how do you feel? Like what’s what’s.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Look, it was kind of bittersweet to a degree. Look, it just came, I think, at a time in my life where I was probably also quite overwhelmed with just responsibility. You know, we suddenly, you know, we had, you know, my family had a farm business in Iraq, which is where I’m originally from. So we had a farm business kind of in Iraq where suddenly all these farmers are dependent on you. So and I hadn’t been there since I was eight. We left Iraq when I was eight. So I.

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, so you’re saying because of your father.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yes, a part of it was bittersweet because I was so I think that there was so much happening on the personal front that everything on the work side, it was just kind of, you know. But it was also a sense like that, like there was a sense of relief to a degree, because I think, you know, the responsibilities, you know, for me, I haven’t. I felt a huge sense of responsibility for my investors. And so, you know, I kind of look, I wish at the end of the day, I wish that we had been able to achieve what we had wanted to achieve. But, you know, at the end of the day, this was kind of the best compromise that that left everybody in a, you know, at peace, I guess, stage. So I think, you know, so it was like it was bittersweet, I think, from that side. Yeah, for sure. I could see all these young guys coming in. You know, I could do this. We could do this. I’ve been there, done that, buddy. Good luck. You know, you know, so you’re kind of like trying to mentor them and still like, don’t try that. Try that one. Yeah, that one’s good. That one, though, you know, and, you know, you do your best. I am a believer that some things you they have to let people have to learn by just making mistakes. Sometimes as long as the mistakes are not too costly. Yeah. And don’t damage you to a point. So I remember when we first opened Takado and, you know, our general manager, Tim, and I said, it needs to be like a it’s a line, it’s a machine. And, you know, so this person, this person opens the wrap, this person puts this, the next person puts that, the next person puts the next bit, wraps it up, goes. I was like, no, I really want to have a personalized experience. So the person that starts serving you stays with you, basically, till the end. I said, no, it’s really not going to work. He said, no, it’s just, let’s just do it. So I was like, fine. You want to try it? Try it. And obviously you have complete chaos, right, because people were jumping in, people were waiting. Nobody was queuing the way they should. They didn’t know if they were there or after. And then after like, after I think about a week, he was like, OK, you’re right. You’re right. Then he had to retrain them not to move. He had to spend a week, he had to literally put footsteps and say, you stay here and you don’t move from here.

Ashish Tulsian:

I think there’s a book on it, Theory of Constraints.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian:

Eliyahu Gulrat. Have you read the book?

Nadine Benchaffai:

I haven’t read that one.

Ashish Tulsian:

You haven’t?

Nadine Benchaffai:

No, I have to.

Ashish Tulsian:

You’re totally sure.

Nadine Benchaffai:

OK, you have to send me. Absolutely.

Ashish Tulsian:

So I’m going to send you a book. So Eliyahu Gulrat, actually, he passed away, I think, a couple of years back, three, four years back. One of the top concerns. So he basically is the founder of or the creator of Theory of Constraints. I think the probably, you know, the best theory on assembly line. And it actually talks about exactly this, right, that that how many stages in assembly line, what are the pivotal stages and how when you move the constraint to what part in the assembly line and how the entire world changes. Right. Which part do you pivot to? And right. So, for example, I was just thinking, right. Apart from having four people who were continuously, who were stationed. Right. Now, this was like you could only serve for like this one person is completely, you know, choked now.

Nadine Benchaffai:

And he used to do different servings. He was like, look, it’s a machine. It needs to like, you know, and it needs to be fast. And so you don’t have a, you know, because in this part of the world, we don’t like to queue. In England, they queue.

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Like the longer the queue, they think that’s just great. They queue. Whereas I’m kind of like nobody here. They’ll just see a queue. They’ll just walk away and go to the next place.

Ashish Tulsian:

Right.

Nadine Benchaffai:

So, yeah. So. So for me, there is an element where I think some things you just need to let them try out. And let them fail, as long as, you know, it’s not going to like kill you. It’s not going to like completely, you know. So, yeah, there’s been lots of times where the team will say, oh, I want to do this. I’m like, yeah, I really don’t think it’ll work. I just want to try it anyway. I was like, OK, fine. Try it. And then I’ll come back a week later and go, right. You never know. Maybe one in 10 times it might be amazing. And we’ve learned something new.

Ashish Tulsian:

No, but I’d still go back to what, how are you feeling as an entrepreneur now? What’s, what has changed for you?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Look, you kind of, you take all these learnings. You, so, so. I wouldn’t, you’d know how you would do things. You wouldn’t do things the same way. So now every time something comes and they say, can you help and look at this? I’m like, I’m very, you’re much faster saying, no, yes, this will work. This won’t work. So from, you know, for me, it was a sense of, you know, it’s a certain chapter, like from a personal perspective, a certain chapter of your life that you kind of, you know, now you’ve kind of, it’s time to move on. And for me, I moved on to a completely almost different sector as well. So I’m working more in agri-tech and food tech. And so it’s very, but I’m still an entrepreneur. I’m still doing restaurants, but not as heavily, right? It’s not my, it’s not my 24 hours, right? You know, the problem with restaurants, right, is you’re on call 24, 24 seven. There’s no vacation. Like, you know, something’s gone wrong, TCOM switched the water off on Saturday morning. Like, who in TCOM do I find to get the water back on? Right. I mean, it’s like it’s 24 seven, right? It just doesn’t end. So I think there was a relief, I think, to not have that level of responsibility on you again. But, you know, you have to take the good and the bad and you say, right, I take the good. You know, we, you know, you know, we’ve built up this great brand and it’s still going strong. And that was important for me that it would, that whoever took it on kept it going and built on it. So that was kind of, you know, part of your legacy, I guess, right? You still want it to, you know, you want it to carry on. But yeah, I mean, I don’t look, I don’t know how else to address that. I mean, I think for me it was, you know, it was time for a change. And the other thing I think I remember having lunch, I won’t say who, because it feels a bit bad, but I was having lunch with somebody who’s been, who’s in the restaurant space and who has been persevering doing this for a lot longer than me and still looking, you know, for an exit. We’re going to get to this and then we’re going to exit and we’re going to, you know.

And I kind of just remember thinking that could have been me.

Ashish Tulsian:

Still, you know what I mean?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Like, I could still, like, if I don’t, if I hadn’t done it or, you know, and I was at the time when we were still like, you know, doing all the paperwork and stuff. I was like, if I don’t do this now, that could be me in six, seven years time, still trying to, you know, rather than just moving on and doing something new. And that’s kind of, I thought, okay, it’s just, yeah. And it really hit me hard on that line. I was like, it’s time to, you know, when you feel like it’s time for a change, because you’re always taught, you know, it’s your baby, you know, you don’t want to let it go. But yeah, no, I mean, look, I feel pride. I think we built a great brand. I think we did a lot of things well. I think we built an amazing team. That was really hard to replicate. I think we did as well as we could in the circumstances. And, you know, and I hope, you know, we’ve handed over to really nice brands to kind of contribute to grow.

Ashish Tulsian:

What do you do for your own learning as an entrepreneur in your life? What are your sources of non-linear, you know, learning in general?

Nadine Benchaffai:

I wish I had time. I always say I’m going to read and, you know, do all these things that you want to do. And, you know, self-improvement. And now I focus, probably try to take more time out for myself and more learning about my health. More than anything, we’re getting older. So it’s kind of like yourself, your other and becoming more self-aware. And also, I think just like, you know, like also accepting the things that you like, the things that you don’t like, the things that you’re good at. And also coming to peace with the things that you’re not good at and that you might not necessarily ever do anything about.

Ashish Tulsian:

Are you calmer now?

Nadine Benchaffai:

You know what I mean?

Ashish Tulsian:

Are you calmer now? Are you like much more calm than before? Or were you like, how do you describe that?

Nadine Benchaffai:

I’ve always been described as being quite calm. I’ve never like, you know, I remember sitting, we were sitting in GIFC when we’d been given the store. And I was sitting to the guys, the guys who’d sold us the store, who’d taken the key money. And he, and you know, and the tortilla thing had just fallen through. And he’s like, you have no team. You have no brand now. It’s like, how are you just sitting here calmly telling me it will be okay? You know, I said, well, because it will be, you know, we’ll find a way, right? You always, you find a way. You just have to believe that you find a way.

Ashish Tulsian:

Where does this come from? Was it the formative years growing up?

Nadine Benchaffai:

There was once, and I think it was in some panel or something, LBS probably, where somebody said, you think everything is a disaster and everything is like, you know. So you put your problem on, you put your problems on one to 10. You know, you give it a scale. Nine, eight, nine is, you know, I don’t know. Something’s happened to your kids. Somebody’s, you know, they’ve gone to hospital. God forbid something bad’s really happened. And he goes, and when you kind of think of it in that way, where is your problem that now, really? And actually most of the time it’s a one or a two. And so when you put it in that perspective, you know, then it kind of calms things down. That’s kind of, for me, actually, it’s something that I probably, I don’t even remember which panel or where I just, but it stuck with me. Because whenever you feel yourself getting wound up or stressed or something, actually, really in the grand scheme of things, what is it? It’s not, it’s nothing, right? There’s a way, you know. And I also believe that, like, so when I was finished, you know, when we were selling it, a lot of people said to me, you know, are you, what are you going to do? What are you going to do now? Are you, like, looking for something? Like, are you panicking? Like, what are you, you know, what are you going to do? And I’m like, you know, I just believe that things, things come out of nowhere that you don’t expect. And so I don’t know what I’ll be doing, but out of the blue, something will happen and somebody will ask and, you know, and that’s just, you know, you just have to be open. And, you know, there was an article about making your luck. I can’t remember if it was in the Wall Street Journal or something. It was like a couple of years ago.

Ashish Tulsian:

I think I’ve seen.

Nadine Benchaffai:

You know, can you make your luck? And this kid was like a chance meeting, you know, by conversation and then how it changed his whole career.

Nadine Benchaffai:

And it’s how do you create those chances? And it is by being going out and going to conferences, but not even, but just just, you know, just going and meeting people and stuff. And things come out of the come out of the blue that you didn’t expect. You know, so for me, when I started, I took on the role of a venture builder. So I’m working with startups. Right.

So what so what do I love? I love working in the startup world. Do I want the response, the full on responsibility of a startup and everything that comes with it at this stage? Probably not. Do I want to be on that journey in some way? Well, yes, because I like, you know, that’s that’s the part that I love. So working on a venture builder, which itself is like a startup. So you are still like in a startup mode, but you’re also working with all these other startups. You’re exposed to new things. You’re constantly meeting new people.

Ashish Tulsian:

And you are vicariously, vicariously living through their.

Nadine Benchaffai:

You’re vicariously living through their journey. You’ve still got your journey because you’re building this, you know, this thing of partnerships and everything. But you’re also, yeah, you’re constantly looking at their journeys and, you know, and how you can make those better. And you’re trying to impart the learnings that you’ve had along the way because it doesn’t really matter to a degree what sector you’re in. It’s being aware of, you know, we always say you, you, you don’t know what you don’t know, kind of thing, and being aware. And when a founder comes and they make it look like they know everything and you know you’re in trouble. Yeah, totally. Because they, you know, that’s the that’s the the number one kind of like, how do you know that? Well, no, OK, I don’t. You see, you don’t know what you don’t know. And that’s the problem. Like you at least need to know. And the blind spots are absolutely, you know, that you need to find things out. So, yeah, that’s kind of and I got that really, again, accidentally. Just, you know, I’ve been working. I got introduced. I’d met somebody, you know, that was to catch up coffee. And, you know, and I said, oh, I’ve got this farm in Iraq and I don’t know what to do with it. And, you know, we’ve got climate change and no water. And, you know, she said, oh, you should meet these ladies. They’re doing this. You know, they might be able to introduce you to some people. And over a year or two of getting to know them and stuff, they said, look, can you? We know you invest. So I still was I’ve always been investing in other businesses. So they said, you know, well, we know you’re do you want to come and invest in some businesses? I said, well, that’s that business is not ready. That one needs this. And they said, actually, OK, fine. Do you want to come and like help, help us get these businesses to a stage where they’re where they’re ready? So that’s kind of the kind of the next journey I joined on. But I’ll always be involved, I think.

Ashish Tulsian:

So now you’re a venture builder. Is that what you’re saying?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah. So, yes.

Ashish Tulsian:

It’s like a venture studio or an accelerator.

Nadine Benchaffai:

How do you work? No, no. Yes. A bit like an accelerator, right? It’s it’s I don’t know. The names always change all the time, but it’s you know, it’s not a venture studio. I think there’s a difference to a venture studio.

Ashish Tulsian:

So you’re not incubating startups.

Nadine Benchaffai:

You’re so where so some of them are. They’re rarely that early, but they typically, you know, seed, seed stage. Some of them are Series A. Some of them are just new, you know, trying to enter this market.

Ashish Tulsian:

And you’re saying agri or is it agnostic?

Nadine Benchaffai:

No, agri and food tech.

Ashish Tulsian:

Agri and agri tech. And when you say food tech means what? Technology or actual food processing tech?

Nadine Benchaffai:

Food tech is so we’re probably are more on the food processing tech. So like, you know, so some like we have a plant based meat one. We might have a certain consumer. So new, you know. Some of them, some of them will cross over a little bit, you know, so we have some that are that I would say are more out like a restaurant on this food tech. So some might be more, you know, that we’re debating. Or do we take them? Do we not take them? Are we you know, are we out of our comfort zone or, you know, we’re typically looking at food tech that works from a BTC, like for sure. Part for business partners that are BTC. So what things will add? So what are the new generation, you know, from like a marketplace or the new, you know, like all of the new trends that are happening? You know, and and it doesn’t have to be so high tech technology quite so. Sometimes it’s the oldest low tech, but we always say it’s not the. It’s not it’s the right tech. People always, you know, it’s not high tech or low tech. It’s just the right tech for that.

Ashish Tulsian:

I know I hear you. I think you said this off of camera as well, that, you know, how much technology is like there’s so much technology. I, I agree with you. And if I’m catching the sentiment right, I mean, I’ve been a tech entrepreneur all my life. And of course, I had a stint in restaurants in between. But I do believe that most of the times when when obsession with technology becomes your, you know, destination, you know, you lose the problem that you are solving. And I see so much out there where technology is trying to find a problem. It’s not, you know, the problem trying to find technology. And whenever you focus on the problem, trying to find tech, it’s generally simpler tech because it’s only about the problem. And you can solve that. I mean, I, I practice that, you know, in our company a lot where my question generally is that, hey, you know what? We’re not selling the coolness of the tech. You know, it can be actually I can live with less cool. I just need to make sure that this problem gets solved. And if it gets all simpler, let’s do that. Let’s just focus that.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Yeah, no. And sometimes you have these really amazing high tech patents, kind of patented technologies and stuff, but that have especially come out of universities. But just finding the right commercial fit is just tough. So we’re focusing on the business partners and saying, what do they need? What are their solutions? And then working, working in that way.

Ashish Tulsian:

Nadine, this was, this was a great conversation.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Thank you.

Ashish Tulsian:

You know, what a phenomenal journey. And I, you know, I feel the calmness, not only in the conversation. I’m sure that, you know, all throughout and I can, I could almost, I could almost picture your DIFC meeting. That experience, at least in my head, will stay with me. Thank you. Thank you for being on the show.

Nadine Benchaffai:

Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you.