What’s the concept behind the brand?
Burger is an easy concept if you love it, and difficult if you don’t. I love burgers. I enjoy them and sometimes I even travel to test or try a burger. I managed to build a good knowledge of burger making and tasting. And when you keep testing on your friends and family and they keep pushing you to make more, you realize that they sincerely like what you’ve made. I am a fan of encouraging entrepreneurship, so I decided to start a food business and begin with something that I believe I can be good at. Adding in a business background with accounting in particular, I learnt that I should be more conservative and offer a product that no one can say no to, a good quality and yet fast casual burger, and thus the concept was born.
The concept was thought up in 2009, but the construction of the first location was in 2011. Do you find it important to leave a certain amount of time between idea and execution? Sometime entrepreneurs think of an idea, but when they sleep on it they lose interest. It’s important to leave a gap to collect information. Watch and observe others. Would you leave the idea for a better one? Are you a person who is usually jumping on different ideas? But in my case it was different. I didn’t leave the gap by choice. It was hard to find the right location, at the right cost, with a property owner willing to rent a space for an unknown brand.
What was the most difficult thing you came up against in the process of developing Hamburgini?
I must say that manpower is usually the number one challenge entrepreneurs face here in Saudi Arabia. And Hamburgini was not an exception. Finding the people who are willing to work in a newly established business requires a lot of convincing.
I should offer a product that no one can say no to. — Nawaf Al Fouzan