Having worked quietly behind the scenes for the past 12 months, the board of Dubai Restaurants Group (DRG) made a first public appearance at The Hotel Show Dubai 2021.
Five members of the board took a break from negotiating deals to appear in front of a packed audience and outline how it is already helping its members.
Gates Hospitality founder and chief executive Naim Maadad hosted the session with chairman Mubarak Bin Fahad, secretary general Kunal Lahori, and board members Walid Fakih and Max Grenard. A lively session ensued, with audience members getting their points across and calling out the areas of the industry they feel have let them down.
Having taken the brunt of the displeasure from the F&B industry over the past 18 months, it’s no surprise that delivery aggregators are high on the agenda for DRG to tackle. But will they concede to the demands of the industry?
Bin Fahad revealed that DRG has been in contact with the government about capping aggregator commission rates. Secretary general Lahori said he believed that aggregators would drop their commission rates once the likes of Noon Food, which will only charge restaurants a flat 15 percent, come online fully.
High level talks have already taken place with Talabat and good news for members of DRG will be announced very soon.
We’ve seen numerous F&B operators speak out about landlords since the pandemic began and DRG has been listening.
Bin Fahad said: “Landlords are one of the major issues. Many restaurants owners and operators feel badly hit with the lockdown and then having to survive on two-metre social distancing. The landlord came and applied the base rental formula and there were a lot of closures. If you have 10,000 square metres and according to social distancing the best occupancy rate is 4,500 square metres, how can you charge a full rate?
“So we reached out to landlords and said we can’t all continue honouring those leases. We worked with landlords and going forward they agreed to apply a percentage of turnover, so if we do well, they do well.”
Dealing with banks is rarely easy, but their lack of help for the sector has left DRG distinctly unimpressed. With Expo 2020 on the horizon, now is the time to support Dubai’s F&B, said Bin Fahad. “How can this sector grow or build something new closer to the Expo area if the financial institutions don’t support them? It’s a major problem.”
By uniting as one voice, the DRG will accomplish real change through high level discussions with government, but Lahori also highlighted its efforts to improve the supply chain, with the creation of a central supplier library that all members will be able to access and receive discounted rates.
McDonald’s UAE GM Fakih said to help DRG achieve its goals it is looking for partners with similar values that it can collaborate with on events or in exchange for visibility with its members and on this newsletter.
To become a member or sponsor of DRG, contact sherine@drg.ae
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