Restart Group, the brand bringing the new restaurant Belcanto at Dubai Opera to town, has over 100 projects around the world, but turned their eye to Dubai as the multicultural city is known for its world-class dining.
Arabian Business spoke to Restart Group’s co-owner Alexey Vasilchuck about their first year in the UAE preparing for the launch of the first restaurant, which will open next month.
Vasilchuck said the UAE, and particularly Dubai, is one of the most interesting markets for the restaurant business, and his team is setting up in Dubai for the long-term.
Restart Group been in the UAE for about a year now. How’s it going? What have you learned in the past year about the market in the UAE and how do you plan to use that information?
Our business is going great. We are working on several projects in Dubai. In our first restaurant, we were lucky enough to work with Emaar on the restaurant opening in the rooftop of one of the most iconic landmark of the city – the Dubai Opera.
The Emaar team helped us not only during construction, but also in finding new places for the implementation of our future projects.
The market here is quite different from the ones we are used to. The main difference is surely the highly international team. We have already had the experience of opening projects abroad, for example, pop-up Birds in Bodrum, Turkey. However, here in Dubai, we built a team for the long term, curated communication with our head office in Moscow, transferred the vision and key philosophy to the team, and optimised processes for local realities and legislation.
Despite the problems and challenges caused by Covid-19, we are still moving forward. Certainly, not everything has gone as smoothly as we would like due to various circumstances, but our team is our strength, and we managed to overcome the difficulties we’ve faced.
Restart has over 100 projects around the world. Why did you choose the UAE?
The UAE is one of the largest and most interesting markets for the restaurant business and tourism. The team and I decided that we should not miss the opportunity for further development in the global market. The UAE in general – and Dubai in particular— is the place where people from all over the world meet each other.
That allows us to experiment with different approaches and concepts. We believe that we can bring something new and unique to the local market and be leaders in various areas in which we had successfully operated before.
Restart boasts their human resources model. Why did the company adopt this model, and what sets it apart from those of your competitors?
This approach helps to choose candidates for the team at the interview stage, so that they can quickly adapt to the new team and work together with us. It is important that there is mutual understanding in the team. This helps not only with business growth, but also during a crisis. The main thing is that the team should have people “of the same DNA as you.”
When did the company adopt this, and what change have you seen in the company, and in your employees, since taking the model onboard?
“When there are people, there is everything” is our business credo. The principle of work of the whole team and the Restart of the Vasilchuk Brothers Group is expressed by the phrase “There is no I in a team”, which implies everyone’s personal responsibility for the overall result.
We want all employees to feel like members of one big family in the company. In 2015, when the stage of rapid growth and development of the holding began, we realised that we needed values that would unite us. We have developed them as a team and there are seven of them in total: love, development, skill, team, responsibility, leadership, trust. Thanks to these values, effective interaction is built in our team.
What’s next for Restart 354 in the UAE? Are you planning to expand in the region as well?
In the near future we plan to open more than one project in the UAE, but we will keep it a secret for now.
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