For those of you who love restaurant food but don’t feel like driving or dealing with crowds, there is a perfect solution — if you live in Bahrain. Just pick up the phone and call Gourmet Taxi. Forty-five minutes later a well-spoken delivery person, dressed as a butler, rings your bell and smilingly delivers your order. Gourmet Taxi, the first service dedicated to home delivery of gourmet meals from Bahrain’s upmarket restaurants, was introduced a year ago. Gourmet Taxi’s fleet, yellow cars and motorcycles which suggest New York cabs with their black and white checkers, zoom around the island delivering food at all hours for a minimal fee and a BD4 minimum order. Now, who are the masterminds behind this much-needed and increasingly popular service?
Muhammad Al-Nusuf, Faisal Kanoo and Talal Al-Khalifa. They are all twenty-something Bahrainis who’ve been good friends since their high school days. After graduating from high school, they found themselves together in Washington D.C., where Al-Nusuf studied finance while his two friends chose political science.
When they returned to Bahrain, the three friends realized that the only places making home deliveries were fast-food restaurants. So a couple of years later, they joined forces to found Gourmet Taxi, inspired by a delivery service in Washington D.C.
I visited the Gourmet Taxi office in Adliya and talked to two of the three partners, Al-Nusuf and Kanoo. I wanted to get an idea of what kind of person orders gourmet food for home delivery. The office resembles the partners’ attitude: casual and easygoing yet aiming for perfection. “We’re not bogged down by formalities because we’re young and dynamic,” says Kanoo, who works in his family business by day. “We’re very flexible and work as a team. Whenever there’s an opportunity we seize it,” Al-Nusuf adds enthusiastically. Such is their work style and because of their close friendship, they trust each other to do what’s best for the business, each in his own way.
The feasibility study for Gourmet Taxi took three months, during which time the partners encountered great skepticism from people who thought the business would not be profitable. But a year later, however, with an average of 45 orders a day, up from 20 when the service was first introduced, the partners feel a sense of elation and vindication. “We have been pleasantly surprised. None of us expected this growth,” says 27-year-old Kanoo. When the service was initially launched, there were three motorcycles, two cars, five staff members and 26 participating restaurants. Today, they have expanded to include five motorcycles and three cars, in addition to 12 staff members and 51 restaurants.
As with any business, there were obstacles to overcome before they could introduce the service. To begin with, they knew they were in need of some sound business advice to help them make their plan a success. Al-Nusuf, Kanoo and Al-Khalifa all belong to well-known families with decades of trading experience behind them. Their families played the role of advisers during those early days in the absence of an “incubator,” a governmental or non-governmental body to support young entrepreneurs looking for advice about starting their own businesses. Both Kanoo and Al-Nusuf believe that such a body would be of great benefit to the increasing number of young Bahrainis who are joining — and want to join — the ranks of entrepreneurs. In addition to coming up with a business plan, there were other hurdles as well. Since the concept of Gourmet Taxi was unfamiliar to Bahrainis, the young men found some problems in receiving a permit for their business.
Once the permit was a reality, however, it was time to go out and sell the idea to restaurants. “We usually presented the idea to the restaurants, gave them a proposal, and then waited to hear from them. Waiting was the hardest part,” Al-Nusuf recalls. The restaurants began to join the service when they saw that Gourmet Taxi and its founders would be reliable partners dedicated to service and quality. Kanoo goes on to explain, “In the beginning we had to approach restaurants but now restaurants approach us.” The partners are still very choosy about the restaurants they deal with.
Another obstacle they faced was hiring the right staff. “Staffing is one of our biggest problems because of our high standards. We are very selective with the drivers and with the people who answer the phone and take orders,” says Kanoo. These people, after all, represent the “face” of the company and the face presented to the public is of paramount importance.
Enter Rico, Gourmet Taxi’s executive butler. The partners wanted a mascot for the service, so they approached an advertising agency with this in mind. The agency came up with Rico who “epitomizes the ultimate in personal service.” Indeed, Rico represents the philosophy of the partners who work hard to perfect every aspect of the business.
Nothing is overlooked at Gourmet Taxi, especially the menu, which is updated on a quarterly basis. Only 50 copies of the first menu were printed during the soft launch in the summer of 2000. Then they went ahead with the hard launch a few months later, says Kanoo, in order to test the market and “refine the formula.” Since the beginning, the partners have viewed the menu as the vital tool through which their business is represented and have therefore taken great care to improve every edition. Today, Gourmet Taxi prints 10,000 copies of the menu every quarter and distributes them to customers all over Bahrain.
As popular as the service has become in Bahrain, especially with expatriates and an increasing number of Bahrainis, Al-Nusuf, Kanoo & Al-Khalifa have more plans for their business, such as including supermarket deliveries in the service and setting up a website on which customers can place their orders. The three young men are also looking at expanding their business into Saudi Arabia in the near future.
Other than improving the services already provided by Gourmet Taxi, the partners have plans to set up other joint ventures because, according to Al-Nusuf, “the chemistry works.”
So what advice would they give to young people looking to start a business of their own? Al-Nusuf believes in having courage. “If you believe in an idea, you should go for it. Even if it doesn’t work, at least you tried and you are sure to learn something useful.” He also feels that working in a partnership keeps enthusiasm high. Al-Nusuf finds a three-way partnership to be the ideal setup in which partners feed off each other’s ideas and rarely find themselves in a deadlocked situation. As for Kanoo, the most important thing is “to have a solid business plan and not to deviate from it. The key lies in the execution. Everyone has great ideas, but execution is what defines the whole thing.”
