Billion-dollar foodie

“I am very tough. Tough about everything. I am tough on myself, on my employees. If I ask you to do something, I don’t want to have to ask you again,” he says.

Whatever he’s doing, it’s clearly working. The co-owner of the international restaurant holding Bulldozer Group with Gaia, CIPRIANI, Shanghai me, Sand, Vi, NOF, more than 50 more restaurants in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Hong Kong, including new spa branch. From Georgian to Greek and Italian to Peruvian, you name it, chances are Orlov has done it somewhere, and done it well.

The UAE has jewels such as Cipriani Dubai, Gaia, Virgin Izakaya, Shanghai Me, Tanuki and Sand, while the group itself operates spa centres. Experts suggest the annual revenues are now well over $140m. Orlov says it is a “few hundred million”. With profit margins close to 20 percent, little wonder he and his partners have had talks with investors over a potential stock market listing that would comfortably put a $1bn price tag on the group.

“We want to open fifteen restaurants a year, so in ten years we would have 150, and some hotels. Let’s see. All I know is this is what I love doing,” he says.

Orlov on the competitive f&b industry

Orlov makes it all look and sound very easy, but it isn’t. Industry failure rates for restaurants are around 30 percent – that means a staggering one in three restaurants that open won’t survive the first year. In the ultra-competitive Dubai market, failure rates have been as high as 60 percent in the first year and 80 percent within the first five years according to a report by Alma Consulting Group.

“This is the most complicated business in the world, because it depends on so many different things. Dishes, food, ambience, vibe, location, design,” says Orlov, adding: “The market is very competitive and there are a lot of big restaurant groups here. In the restaurant business a few things are very important and the first is location. All the restaurant groups are fighting to get the best location.

“Now landlords don’t like to give any location to just anybody, they are giving it to the experts and the best professionals. Then to create a concept or bring a good one here but you need to be very careful to adapt this concept to a local market. Then there is a team, it’s very important to have the best of the best, because everybody is hunting for the best team… Because we have opened in many countries, we have this knowledge and experience.”

The same Alma Consulting report list several reasons for restaurant failures, with lack of working capital the biggest, followed by low attention to detail in managing resources, poor operational management and excessive spending in equipment.

But Orlov says it’s even simpler than that: You just need to know what you’re doing. “When I walk into one of my restaurants I can see all the mistakes immediately. I see that the music is too loud, or the light is too bright. Or some other things I can just feel. You need to have good intuition. When I started in this business, I was not a restaurant person. I studied a lot of concepts, and even now, I do that when I am travelling. You can never stop studying or learning.”

He adds: “Not anybody can be a businessman. In the restaurant business you need to have good taste not just for food but design, and you need to be a psychologist to be able to understand people and hire the right people. You need to keep a very high level to everything.”

So why do his restaurants always succeed while many competitors fall by the wayside? “It’s consistency. Food should be consistent always, the service should be consistent. Not all of them (competitors) can keep doing this. You have restaurants that open in a good way and then the owners leave to some other country. They leave it to general manager, who is not an owner. It is important that if you are an owner you need to come to your own restaurant. The first two months are the most important period because that’s when you need to make changes.”

But even with all the above boxes ticked, Orlov says it will ultimately come down to one thing: People. “It’s people, people, people. Getting the right team. To hire them, to keep them and then sometimes yes to fire them,” he says.

Orlov is enjoying the fruits of success right now, but it wasn’t always this way. He says he made his fair share of mistakes along the way.

“It was tough. We had to get knowledge and experience of the markets, and we made mistakes. If you are doing something you are making mistakes, if you are not moving you will not make mistakes. Yes, we got some location and concepts wrong, but we learned from those.”

The group was founded a decade ago – the name was chosen as it symbolises non-stop movement – and yes, crushing and breaking down all barriers ahead if it. True to its name, that is exactly what it has been doing – and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.

“I couldn’t do anything else, all I am driven by is success. It isn’t about money or power, but they come together when you have success. I have no plans to stop and go and sit on a beach and do nothing. You know something? I have never been employed by anyone in my life. I always did some business somewhere, starting small. I could never have a boss. Oh no, never, no, I like it this way. That’s why I do this.”