PROTEINHOUSE — SME Case Study (UAE)

In December 2018, Ishaq Ahli opened the first branch of PROTEINHOUSE in Dubai, which was registered as a small to medium business. PROTEINHOUSE is not a regular dine-in restaurant, but it is a healthy food restaurant which offers high quality food. Dine-in is not the only option offered by the selected SME, because there is a monthly food subscription which is popular among customers.

Monthly subscriptions differentiate PROTEINHOUSE from traditional restaurants that orient their goals on daily serving for dine-in and take-away. Common concerns for restaurants such PH include solving issues related to the unhealthy food consumption among people. The

founder, Ishaq Ahli said

PROTEINHOUSE “I want my society to eat healthy and be healthy. There are many viruses and illnesses which are spreading all over the world and preventing yourself from such viruses is important, especially today when we are aware of COVID-19. We do offer only high quality of food. For example, our chicken is hormone-free which is healthier than the one you can find in the supermarket. Chicken that is not hormone-free may cause health issues. We care about quality because we care about health. The slogan of PH is to eat clean, train men and get lean.” Since 2018, the PH has achieved great goals and has grown over time. Now, PH is available in two new locations. One of location is in the gym. Ahli decided to expand into strategic locations where there is a high number of potential customers who may be interested in healthy food and monthly diet plans. The first branch of PROTEINHOUSE in Dubai opened in Warqa Mall, which is far away from the center, so Talabat and other delivery services cannot cover it. Thus, the customers are mainly from the areas which are beside Warqa, while the gym branch covers Business Bay and the nearest areas.

“We were aiming to move into the location, which will allow us to be in close distance with the gym and will allow us to cover the Financial Center for people who are daily working in their offices or have no time to cook one day advance, so the only way for them is to have a business lunch in the nearest cafe or order through Talabat. I want everyone to have an opportunity to eat healthy rather than consuming snacks or unhealthy sandwiches,” said Ahli.

Another location which has been opened by PH is in a dark kitchen. Since, many F&B enterprises are moving into a new “platform” which is known as cloud, ghost or dark kitchen. Such kitchens provide businesses with full equipment and space for cooking. The main concept is to cover the areas which have been not covered previously and to not face huge costs. With the new dark kitchen, PH has started to cover areas such Motor City, Sport City, and Investment Park.

In 2020, when the world faced the crises caused by the spread of COVID-19, the PH was affected as well. When the lockdown took place, the owner of PH, purchased the necessary equipment in order to sustain safety at the workplace. That was a crucial part and still is a crucial part for PROTEINHOUSE, to ensure that food is prepared and packaged with the regulation of Food Safety Regulations under Virus Conditions. Here are some significant changes I have gathered during conversation

with the owner

¡ Masks must always be on.

¡ Every three hours, employees change their masks.

¡ Gloves must be on.

¡ Regular hand sanitization stations are among employees.

¡ Equipment such as furniture needs to be sanitized after each customer.

¡ Menu of the restaurant is now available through QR code scanning.

¡ Wire payment is well encouraged. (In order to minimize contact) ¡ If one of the employees has symptoms or his family members test positive, that employee will be quarantined.

These are some basic regulations which are followed during the pandemic. I would like to add that the consequences of COVID-19 have proved that a healthy lifestyle is becoming more crucial than ever.

“We do need to boost our immune system and in order to boost it, we do use the best ingredients here at PROTEINHOUSE,” added Ahli.

A mission statement is an important part for any SME.

It must be always interconnected with the vision.

Both allow the company to build its strategy which will ensure that both are achieved. The mission of PROTEINHOUSE is to obtain the necessary resources in order to educate people regarding the importance of healthy food consumption. As part of the mission, PROTEINHOUSE participates in sport events where the company’s dietician freely can share the information on nutritions and count the calories intake for individuals.

In January 2021, PROTEINHOUSE participated in the morning exercises that were launched by Jamal Shafar in Jumeirah. During that event, the dietician Abdulla Al Awadi gave a lecture to all participants regarding the flexible diet. The idea was to make people aware that being healthy may be easier with a flexible diet offered by PROTEINHOUSE. So, overall I can say that its mission is to spread awareness of the importance of healthy food and encourage people in doing daily activities.

Vision Statement The vision of the company is to make the society healthy by offering better quality of food and spreading the importance of eating healthy food. Ishaq Ahli is not just an entrepreneur, he can be considered as a social entrepreneur who connects his vision to solving social problems of obesity and various illnesses caused by obesity. His vision is wide, as it covers solving social problems.

For SME, a vision statement is the aspect or point which may be considered as unique because normally, business entities aim to achieve strategic goals related to the profit gathering. However, Ahli went beyond that and he is studying in a master’s program that specializes in sport management and will allow him to move much further in his vision.

Reporting System The reporting system of an F&B entity is very important because it allows us to obtain information regarding the inventory tracking, sales and costs which have occurred as well as to be aware of the waste.

That is a complicated part to gather graphs or tables which will represent the company’s reporting system.

However, Ahli has kindly shared the table below, which represents the inventory ordering and tracking sheet.

Code Inventory Item 1st Unit 1 to 2 Measurement Cost Price For 2nd Unit Category Day 1, On Hold Day 2, On Hold Day 3 Order Bean Black Grm Inventory Bean Garbanzo Grm Inventory Baking Powder Grm Inventory Baking Soda Grm Inventory Cereal Granola Grm Batches Chocolate Chip Grm Inventory White Chocolate Chips Grm Inventory Coconut Shred Grm Inventory Coconut Snowflake Grm Inventory Coconut Oil Inventory Coconut Sugar Grm Inventory Coconut Water Inventory Cranberry Grm Inventory Cranberry (Sysco) Grm Inventory Croutons Grm Inventory Croutons Homestyle Butter Garl Grm Inventory The sheet above represents the daily reporting system,

which is done by the PH employees who areFigure 99

in charge to receive the supplies and order supplies.

Tracking the inventory for the restaurant is important so nothing is wasted. Overall, PH does track its inventory through the PO where rceived items are entered.

Once the sales are done, the POS system is capable of considering the items which have been sold. The accuracy of such a tracking approach may not be an exact due to customers’ order cancelations, but allows the restaurant to have necessary information regarding the average daily inventory movements.

As per the reporting system, PROTEINHOUSE uses the POS system, which tracks daily sales. The principle of work is very simple: at the end of the day, when cash out is done and the POS is closed, the manager receives a report with all transactions that have occurred during this day. The transactions are transferred to an Excel file where sales and all costs are recorded. By the end of the month, the manager is able to prepare the monthly report representing the monthly profit with daily sales and expenses.

Leadership Larissa Reis, PROTEINHOUSE co-founder and IFBB pro athlete, is a nutritionist, certified personal trainer, and entrepreneur. She created the concept of a PROTEINHOUSE restaurant in order to get people’s attention and make them eat with purpose. She established PROTEINHOUSE in the USA. PROTEINHOUSE was established in 2012 with a fitness mindset to change social habits in food consumption. More importantly, Reis is a professional in that field, she knows why nutrients are important to achieve athletic goals as well as it’s important to stay healthy.

Ishaq Ahli is the owner of PROTEINHOUSE, which operates as a franchise in the UAE. He has the master franchise, which allows him to open different branches all over the UAE. Ahli is a professional bodybuilder, IFBB pro athlete, entrepreneur and certified personal trainer.

Needless to say, the master franchise allows Ahli to be the only person who can open a PH in the UAE. He has registered his restaurant as a SME, which offers benefits including an easier trading license application and overall favourable contractual terms which are offered by the DHA. Ahli also works in the government, but his position is a personal coach of the Dubai Migration Department.

Here is his view regarding working for both private and

public sectors

“I have been working for the Dubai Migration Department since 2010, and I have had a great experience that allowed me to grow in my field. However, with opening PROTEINHOUSE in Dubai, I have come up with new ideas. Those ideas have been proposed to my manager at Dubai Migration. One of the ideas has been achieved

from being an officer who is working on customs duties

I have shifted to become a coach. Now I train employees of our department. The government of the UAE supports the idea of a healthier lifestyle, so I believe we are doing a great job. Now my second step is to open the sub fitness department in the Migration of Dubai, which will help employees to sustain the daily activities and provide them with necessary nutrition calculations that will help them to build healthier meals in their lives. We need to ensure that people are well-educated when it comes to healthy food consumption.” The structure below represents the employees division within PROTEINHOUSE. At the head of the restaurant is a general manager who handles strategically important concepts of the restaurant. The name of the general manager at PH is Richard, who has seven years of experience in the F&B field and ensures the proper functioning of PROTEINHOUSE in the UAE.

The quality manager is the one who reports to the general manager regarding people’s performance at the restaurant. It is necessary to add that the quality manager at PROTEINHOUSE operates as a head chef which allows him to clearly monitor the work of the assistant chef and cooks. He monitors the daily operational processes which happen inside the kitchen. Also, the quality manager must ensure that safety conditions of work are well-applied.

As per the provisions manager, he is the head of monthly subscriptions and handles the counting of calories for people and also builds a monthly packages. The provision manager is in direct contact with chefs, cooks and the assistant chef because all together, they are responsible for preparing and packing the meals which will be sent daily to more than 150 clients.

All waiters at PROTEINHOUSE are supervised by a hall manager who is mainly known as supervisor of FOH (front of the house). The supervisor is a waiter as well and who do takes orders, serves and prepares protein shakes/juices.

The last part of the team is the cleaning crew. In fact, the cleaning manager is considered to be the one who has more experience in the company and during the busy time, is able to come to clients and deliver food to their cars. This is an exception only when it’s busy.

General Manager Quality Manager Provisions Manager Chef Hall Manager Cleaning Manager Cleaning Crew Waiters Cooks Chef Assistant Figure 14: Leadership Chart of PROTEINHOUSE Restructure Due to the Pandemic There are various reasons why companies restructure, such as mergers or acquisitions, introduction of new technologies or operational processes, and many other changes which may appear and cause organizational restructure.

This focus is on restructure of PROTEINHOUSE due to pandemic. Ahli, obviously, allocates necessary leadership skills and in addition to that, he has a great vision regarding his business.

In spring 2020, when the COVID-19 restrictions started to be applied, PROTEINHOUSE minimized the number of employees who are working in one shift. That was done in order to minimize risks of COVID-19 spreading and in order to allocate more employee work space. So, one person in the open kitchen, one chef is inside the kitchen and helps the head chef, and one cleaner and one waiter.

Needless to say that PROTEINHOUSE during the pandemic mainly focused on the safety during food preparation and packing, where everyone needed to wear gloves, wear masks and use sanitizer on a regular basis.

However, that may not be considered as a restructure since restructure led to the significant operational changes that may be related to the introduction of new machinery or new systems.

PROTEINHOUSE has started to introduce new offers and discounts, and distribute brochures for free ginger shots for everyone who is ordering through Talabat. Also, the restaurant has created an account on the new platform known as TikTok. On TikTok, PH has been posting videos showing how employees do their morning check- up before starting duty. Also, during the pandemic, the number of challenges on TikTok have increased because people were isolated, so TikTok became a great entertainment platform for both children and adults.

PROTEINHOUSE took advantage of that and started to participate in TikTok as well and was a strategy to attract people’s attention to the restaurant.

s PROTEINHOUSE is a healthy food restaurant, so the product offered by the restaurant is the food itself and monthly subscriptions.

As per the dine-in experience, dishes are made from high quality products, intended directly for eating. The chicken, which is purchased from suppliers, is hormone- free which makes it taste better. On the menu, meals are divided into breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Moreover, PROTEINHOUSE offers vegetarian cuisine, protein dishes for athletes, low-calorie for people who are on a diet, and for everyone who just wants to be healthy. Dishes are mostly steamed, boiled or grilled. In the preparation, seafood salt, natural spices, and fresh herbs are used.

This is the list of services provided to guests

¡ Provide quality ¡ Tasty food which will be healthy ¡ Provide high quality service ¡ Provision of monthly diets Let me focus a little bit on the last one. There are three types of monthly subscriptions. Each type depends on the client’s goal, either the person is gaining mass, losing weight or just interested in following a healthy lifestyle.

PROTEINHOUSE applies a differentiation strategy, according to which restaurants introduce new concepts of a healthy lifestyle. First of all, as per the discussion with the owner, PROTEINHOUSE is the only healthy food restaurant in the UAE which sources from the U.S. bison and sells it in the restaurant. Bison is a type of beef which is more lean than normal angus beef. Simply speaking, bison is higher in protein than any other beef.

Another significant aspect which PH sustains is the flexibility of monthly subscriptions and variety of new meals introduced. The manager of the restaurant,

Richard added

“People who are subscribing to monthly packages are expecting to receive the high quality of meals, but we do things beyond that. That’s why on a monthly basis, we try to introduce new recipes which will be served to people who are subscribed. Now we already have a variety of cuisines and meals which are liked by our clients, including in-house made chicken biryani, Korean beef, Mongolian Beef, Bolognese spaghetti, pesto pasta, Chicken tawook, etc. In addition, we are following up on the client’s experience with us at the end of every week in order to adjust as per preferences and requests.” The differentiation strategy of PROETINHOUSE can be also recognized by activities which are done by the restaurant. PH participates in various events including healthy days in the public sector, sport events such as the muscle show, sport games and sport challenges such as 30x30.

Significant aspects of the operational strategies in PROTEINHOUSE include flexibility and quality control.

Here are some key points of operational strategies used

by PROTEINHOUSE

¡ PROTEINHOUSE focuses on the quality of the supplies, like the hormone-free chicken. It has been pointed out by Ahli that chicken is the most sold protein in the restaurant since most people prefer to eat chicken rather than beef. Chicken in PH is hormone-free and high in cost, which proves that PH applies quality as a part of its operational strategy.

¡ As per area maintenance, on a regular basis, there is maintenance of the equipment, air conditioning, ventilation and pest control. For the restaurant, which does daily deal with food preparation and packing, it is important to have proper services.

During the pandemic, monitoring of operational processes is extremely important and PROTEINHOUSE says the key points that are mentioned above must be well-sustained.

By filling accounts with relevant content, PH decided not to limit itself to standard tools for attracting audience attention (mass following and massliking, working with geo-sites, setting up targeted advertising), but to focus its attention on cooperation with bloggers and

partnerships with friendly companies. Ahli claims

“At the end of year one, we have attracted hundreds of satisfied admirers of healthy food to the restaurant.” PH has accounts in all major social platforms - Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook and Twitter. Daily there are various posts and re-posts which are aiming to gain more views and awareness. Social media is playing an important role for PH, because there is a communication channel which helps to deliver messages to a higher audience and to get feedback from current clients.

PH recognizes its social media accounts as a two-way communication channel. The restaurant spreads the message of why it is important to eat healthy, as well as updating the audience with current promotions and advertisements.

“There is no age, gender or social status in order to eat healthy food. Eating healthy always was and will be crucial for any company in the world, so today we are trying to prove that fact for everyone,” Ahli said.

The marketing strategy applied by PROTEINHOUSE is known as a digital marketing strategy, according to which restaurants highly depend on online advertising.

Key challenges nowadays are all related to the pandemic conditions of work, under which every restaurant is fighting for the customer. With the case of PROTEINHOUSE, a company which is recognized to be an SME, it faces challenges which are related mainly to the nature of work. In 2018, PH offered monthly subscriptions. However, the capacity of restaurants is limited while the number of people who are interested in joining monthly plans is growing. The restaurant is trying to expand its operations. That is another reason why Dark Kitchen was opened in Motor City recently.

One small restaurant could not have enough space in order to serve more than 150 people, so it decided to expand. Limited capacity and a rapidly growing number of monthly subscribed people is growing, so now the challenge needs to be undertaken.

Another significant challenge is related to people’s cultural habits regarding food consumption. As per the owner, not all people are well-educated regarding the importance of healthy eating, so that is a challenge for a healthy food restaurant such as PROTEINHOUSE, which is trying to spread the importance of healthy eating.

Another challenge is related to inventory tracking. Due to the high number of people who are subscribed for monthly plans, there are various cases when subscribed people freeze or pause their memberships at the last moment when the food is already ready and packed.

Also, kitchens prepare the food in batches, which also may not be 100% accurate to what will really be used.

Thus, the accuracy level of inventory tracking is a challenging.

The leader of PROTEINHOUSE says all effort is being put into facing those challenges.

Challenge Management In order to manage the challenges, the PH leader is undertaking actions. In 2019, Ahli and the dietician Abdulla Al Awadi, introduced the idea of a flexible diet, according to which people may eat fast food sometimes, but within the calorie limit. This has been done not to criticize the ideal of healthy food eating, but to point out that staying fit and focusing on the healthy lifestyle may have some tips too which will make the lives of everyone easier.

Best Applied Practices In order to make people aware of the importance of a healthy lifestyle, PH participates in various events where nutrient consultation is provided to everyone who is interested. Also dieticians are promoting the idea of a flexible diet.

As per the inventory tracking, there are some common procedures which have been segregated in order to track the inventory. Without regular and correct inventory, the establishment can suffer from losses and problems with business processes and in the worst case, even close.

Here are practices applied by PH

¡ The person in charge starts counting inventory after the end of his/her shift.

¡ All orders and table settlements must be closed.

Otherwise, some products will be counted with errors.

¡ If the institution works around the clock, then it should proceed to inventory after removing the daily sales report at the checkout.

There is a check of each warehouse and storage location

separately, including the

¡ Kitchen (main products) ¡ Consumable warehouse (where consumables, household chemicals, etc. are stored) and other storage locations.

¡ Products and supplies are not moved between warehouses and storage locations during inventory.

A failed practice has been pointed out by the owner is the tracking inventory: when new locations started to open, there was one tracking inventory file where every branch information had been submitted. That did not work, because as has been mentioned previously, in order to prepare meals, all food is cooked in batches, and cancelations from the client’s side causes difficulties when information is all combined.

Now, the system has been separated and every branch has its own inventory tracking. Reports are analyzed by the general manager.

When PH was opened, there was only one location in Warqa, which is not well-known and recognized. Thus, PH was not well-known. However, with time, the restaurant gained experience and customers.

Now, PH has three locations around Dubai, and there is a great willingness from the owner to expand more and move forward into making society healthier.

I recommend Ahli to consider moving into the locations which will offer people a great experience of eating on the terrace, for example. In simple words, PH needs to consider opening a location in Jumeirah, where there is a huge allocation of people during the day.

Moreover, advertising needs to cover more platforms and more promotions. Promotions may be related to the offering of free monthly subscription for the winner in a digital competition, etc. Also, I would suggest Ahli to post client results on social media so people can see the “before” and “after” effect. That may help to increase the number of customers.

¡ F&B filed just like any other industry has faced various challenges, but there was not a single day when PROTEINHOUSE was not operating for take away. That proves that the SME is following the proper business and marketing strategies that allow it to attract customers.

¡ The marketing strategy applied by PROTEINHOUSE allocates monthly budgets where the company could sponsor well-recognized athletes.

¡ PROTEINHOUSE is not only a profit oriented company, but can be connected to the social company, which is trying to solve the social issues of obesity.

¡ Business challenges of PROTEINHOUSE are mainly related to the tracking of the company’s inventory.

¡ Tracking the company’s inventory is a challenge that can be managed by the complex system installation, which will allow it to deal with daily tracking.

To sum it up, I would like to say that the case study of PROTEINHOUSE easily fulfills the course outcome, where we do discuss the leadership concepts. Ahli has the clear vision of making everyone healthy in the UAE.

This case study has been useful in terms of understanding how SMEs are run in the UAE and what are the main challenges of the SME chosen. In the future, analyzing PH’s strategies and operational processes may help evaluate its performance and figure out the weaknesses and strengths.