German Doner Kebab
network to include 532 stores, Sarwar wasn’t necessarily on the market for another franchise opportunity. But an aha moment while on holiday was impossible to ignore. “I had a kebab in Dubai at a German Doner Kebab restaurant,” he recalls. “I thought it tasted so good that I went back to the hotel and told my whole family I was taking them all out for one the next day.” Though his wife and kids were sceptical to say the least – they certainly hadn’t travelled abroad to eat an Emirati take on German street food – the whole gang was won over by the fresh flavours and his kids actually lobbied to go back every day during the trip. Impressed and feeling confident that he had the necessary experience in both franchising and the food business, Sarwar looked into bringing the franchise to the UK – a nation that already had a long-standing relationship with kebabs. That’s not to say there wouldn’t be a few challenges though. “To be honest, I had some reservations about the name,” he says. “People are pretty patriotic in the UK and I wasn’t sure how they’d feel about the word ‘German’. But I was confident people would forget all about the name once they tried the food.” To help put a British stamp on the brand, Sarwar invested heavily in social media and locally relevant marketing from the start. And hitting the right note with the communications was particularly important not just to help people come to terms with the name but also to overcome some pretty ingrained preconceptions about kebabs. “Most people think of kebabs as something unhealthy you eat at one o’clock in the morning when you’re stumbling out of a pub and then regret when you wake up the next morning,” Sarwar says. “I wanted to change the way people saw them and show they could be made
When it comes to food, it’s OK to grow fast
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with fresh and healthy ingredients.” While getting people to see kebabs as a legitimate lunchtime meal – rather than a dirty snack gobbled by the kerb with a side order of self loathing – might seem like a tall order, Sarwar is drawing inspiration from another guilty pleasure that’s been given a makeover recently. “Just look at what’s happened with the rise of gourmet burgers,” he says. “Those businesses have taken a normal fast-food product that contained low-quality meat and turned it into something that you can enjoy without the guilt. We’ve done the same by taking a product people love and cleaning it up. Our food contains 100% lean meat, comes with handmade bread and is lower in calories.” As his first franchise launch showed, Sarwar isn’t one to take a wait-and-see approach. Within nine months he had brought 23 franchisees on board, each of whom have multiple-store deals. But is the entrepreneur worried he’s growing a little too quickly? In a word, no. “When it comes to food, it’s OK to grow fast. We’re not reliant on immigrant workers; the only source of contention is the fact that we import meat,” he says, referring to the fact that the company has been bringing in all its meat from Germany. But with the pound’s devaluation following the EU referendum, costs have inevitably risen. “Right now, the situation with the euro is making it a bit more difficult,” he says. But a solution is coming: with help from his current German supplier, Sarwar plans to open a UK plant that will be able to source and process British meat without the need to rely on imports. This fits in with a wider plan to expand the network in Britain to include 200 outlets over the next five years. “I’m most interested in starting something from the ground up and building it up before passing it on,” Sarwar says. He’s certainly giving it his all, investing in both marketing and senior management talent to give the initial batch of franchisees a lift and prove that the concept will work on UK shores. If all goes to plan, the sighting of a German Doner Kebab shop will soon be regarded as evidence of a neighbourhood’s gentrification.
elitefranchise | November 2016
International.indd 3
04/11/2016 16:38