INTERVIEWER: YASMEN RAGAB
EDITOR: NADA KHAFAGA
About Holmes: “Small burger place in Alexandria, Egypt. We’re not making those weird fancy burgers but we trust our beef.. You’re gonna like it.”
THE INTERVIEW
1- HR revolution Middle East: Okay, let’s start. First of all how many partners are you? And what are your majors?
Mohamed Fouad: Just me and my cousin, Eyad. I studied engineering.
Eyad Nagah: And I am still a student in The Faculty of Fine Arts, Architecture Department.
2- HR revolution Middle East: Did your study help you in managing Holmes?
Mohamed Fouad: No, not in a direct way at least. Engineering in general helps your mind to work faster and to know how to deal with problems; you can do better troubleshooting and it improves how you think. But no, it has not helped me in a direct way.
3- HR revolution Middle East: How did it all start? When did you start the project? And what brought this idea to your minds?
Mohamed Fouad: Well, I was in college, precisely in the third year in 2011, I started a small web-services project with my friend Walid; it was named “Croco Bites”. During that time, I used to travel in the summer to London and work there in some restaurants, so on and so forth. I was not a successful engineering student, you see, so I started thinking that I want something else, I want to do other things, plus my friends who had graduated did not find any jobs. So, what else did I have? With all the previous experiences from London’s restaurants added to the fact that I really love food, I told Eyad let’s do something different.
Eyad Nagah: Yes, Mohamed is four or five years older than I am, so he is my Godfather and ever since we were kids we shared everything. I am not in love with my major, too. Somehow I went through this for my parent’s sake.
Mohamed Fouad: We all did! Anyways, I graduated and I went to work with my uncle in his Import/Export company. This was my first real interaction with the business world. It made me realize a lot of things, from how to get what you need and how to have a good relation with your customer, the deals, the money, everything. My position was an “External Operations Manager”. I do not know if this position exists in other companies or not, or did he make it just for me but that was my job. I travelled around to conclude deals for the company. It was fun because I really love travelling. But I was not totally satisfied as I was still an employee, you know what I mean, but I worked for a year and it was very fruitful. This is when I called Eyad and said we should do something.
First, we decided it was going to be a restaurant then the idea of Burgers came. We suffered for six months trying different recipes, our kitchen witnessed disasters. We started working with our own hands till we could rely on others to make the same quality and also at the beginning we could not afford any employment.
We left the kitchen gradually, one after the other. By that time we had a full system to keep things in order. We had another partner but he left a while ago. The whole cooking thing and the recipes were just Eyad and me.
4- HR revolution Middle East: What about your employment system? How does this operation go?
Mohamed Fouad: We ask for CVs and both of us do the interviews. We faced a huge problem because those who were willing to work as kitchen staff do not know how to make a decent or reliable CV.
But our first concern in the interview was decency, because these people will deal directly with customers, and depending on the segment of customers we deal with, the employee must be good-looking, as well. Our main problem was that all who were willing to work with us were still college students. So, for instance, I tend to change most of my crew. I have students from almost all faculties including Academy students, and Faculty of Commerce students.
5- HR revolution Middle East: What was the problem that faced you in first launching Holmes?
Mohamed Fouad: License and paper work. It was our mistake, as we started from the bottom and did not know how things worked exactly, in addition to some problems with the neighbors and the building’s owners-union.
6- HR revolution Middle East: Have you thought about Delivery?
Mohamed Fouad: Of course we did, but the thing is part of what makes us special is that our customers have the chance to live the whole experience. You can see the sandwiches being made on the spot. You can also enjoy the restaurant’s decoration and music. Delivery will ruin this whole experience and we don’t want that.
7- HR revolution Middle East: How do you make your beef? Because that was the first thing that made me revisit you as a customer.
Mohamed Fouad: At first, we were dealing with some factory but things did not go very well as it was almost impossible to make any quality assurance over it. So, now we have our own tiny factory that makes our own beef with our ingredients.
8- HR revolution Middle East: Marketing. How did you start and how do you use social media?
Mohamed Fouad: Well, I believe that’s what made us so popular in such a short time. It was the propaganda we made on Facebook two months before the opening. One thing that we find very funny is that some rumors came out and helped us even more.
-HR revolution Middle East: That is impressive!
Mohamed Fouad: Yes, some rumors said that we were originally from Cairo and a lot of comments said “Thank you for coming to Alexandria.” Some other people claimed that they ate in Holmes restaurants in Paris and London! I do not know how those ideas came to life but I am really thankful for them.
9- HR revolution Middle East: I guess the name helped you.
Mohamed Fouad: Yes, it is very British, I know. That is because I really love London. What I want to say is that we are the ones responsible for our social media accounts. My experience in “Croco Bite” helped me in managing those accounts easily.
10- HR revolution Middle East: How long did it take you to transform Holmes from an idea into a reality?
Mohamed Fouad: Well, we rented the space on the 30th of December 2014. We had spent two months before that searching for a place for our restaurant. Then, we spent another three months on the decoration. The store was 18.5 meters but we did all the decoration ourselves. The opening was on the 6th of March. So, you can say from five to six months.
11- HR revolution Middle East: What are your future plans?
Mohamed Fouad: Well, we are thinking about new expansions. Holmes is already a trade mark now. So our next step will be an expansion.
12- HR revolution Middle East: Your new branch in Loran, will it have any new additions in the menu?
Mohamed Fouad: Of course, yes. The opening day will be on Holmes’ birthday and you are invited. There are many surprises, but you will have to wait and see.
-HR revolution Middle East: Thank you!
13- HR revolution Middle East: What is the strategy that is followed when neither of you are around?
Mohamed Fouad: Well, currently I am not working anywhere else so I am basically around most of the time. First of all, any hired employee takes a whole month of training before I can rely on them to be in the kitchen on their own. We had a little problem with this when we opened this branch –the one on the roof of the Doctors’ club- but it was inevitable; the staff here were new and were not acquainted with rush hours so on the opening day we got terrible feedback.
One of the important things a manager should do is to be around, not necessarily all the time, but at least most of the time. I use reports, which is the best thing I came up with; written reports. Nagy, here, is responsible for the reports, no matter what you do always keep someone in charge because this responsibility load will make everything orderly.
So, yes the secret word is written reports. Whoever does anything must write it down and sign next to it, by using this method it becomes easier to detect a problem or to know where things started to be messy.
14- HR revolution Middle East: What are the types or segments of customers you deal with? I guess the majority is youth.
Mohamed Fouad: Yes.
15- HR revolution Middle East: Are you planning to target any new segments?
Mohamed Fouad: I believe this new place already made us meet some new customer segments. Let’s say at Roushdy, we used to meet B+ and A segments, now we deal with B and B- and it is going good. And sometimes we get an entire family, not only people in their 20’s and teenagers.
16- HR revolution Middle East: Did you face any trouble dealing with your customers?
Mohamed Fouad: Not really, no. Our problem at Roushdy was the long waiting list; people used to wait for an hour or so to get a table and sit and eat, which was again inevitable as the restaurant was small.
The whole magic lies in your ability to handle your customers’ anger and to satisfy them with all possible means. I believe that the customers’ satisfaction is more important than the product you offer. I have my own holy trinity; it is a triangle with the product, the service, and the identity; the relation between those three is complementary. You can never be successful if you are lacking one of those three elements.
17- HR revolution Middle East: Do you deal directly with your customers?
Mohamed Fouad: Yes, as I said my customers’ satisfaction is really important. So, yes, sure, sometimes when I come I ask a group of friends for instance about the food and the service, so that I can know how my crew is doing.
18- HR revolution Middle East: You said earlier that your customers’ category has witnessed a change, has this affected you as a manager?
Mohamed Fouad: Yes, it slightly did. For instance, my best-seller sandwich has changed. In Roushdy it was “Cheesy Mushroom” here it is “The Original Cheese Burger” but I won’t call it a harmful change. Your store’s area determines a lot, but if you are smart enough you can use it all to your favor and that is what makes you a successful businessman. My customer segment hasn’t changed, it has expanded, that’s all.
19- HR revolution Middle East: How do you deal with this change?
Mohamed Fouad: As I told you, from my point of view, it is not a harmful change. And let’s be realistic, one can never satisfy all the customers, you target a segment and you work on their satisfaction and you make sure you don’t annoy other customers, but they won’t all be 100% satisfied. That is why we keep on working and producing new products to try and reach the best to satisfy all our customers, it is not going to be easy but we are willing to try.
HR revolution Middle East: Thank you so much for your time, and for your burgers.
Mohamed Fouad: You are most welcome. Thank you.
FACEBOOK PAGE:
https://www.facebook.com/holmesburgers/
