Secrets To Restaurant Success With Sihaam Masae of Oh Poké

“Find the right concept and the right partners, and be hands-on” — Sihaam Masae, founder & creative director, Oh Poké group.

Some people have the gift of getting straight to the point. Sihaam is one of them.

When I asked her about the secret to scaling up a restaurant, she boiled it down to these three key factors.

With 31 Oh Poké restaurants, Sihaam knows what she is talking about.

“We have no investors or franchisees, so we had to create a solid system that would allow us to scale.”

Safuan Khan, the CEO, goes a step further, saying, “We have created something that has to be able to work independently of us. If one of us is not available, or in case of an exit, that machine has to keep running.”

Let’s look at the three key factors that helped Oh Poké scale.

💡 Concept: Safuan: “Poké is a great product is to scale because it has a low infrastructure footprint. You don’t need a super-equipped kitchen or experienced chefs. We can even move to regular retail locations and work with people who don’t have kitchen experience. A commercial location and a good attitude is all we need.

🤝 Partners: Sihaam: “First of all, this refers to the team. We are like a football team. Everyone has different qualities, but to score a goal, we have to work together. Secondly, it refers to suppliers. We work hard to have a good relationship with all our suppliers. They are part of the success and provide most of the logistics. Safuan: “We used to prepare our sauces ourselves, for example, but to work at scale and ensure consistency, we outsourced production and storage. It’s a very lean operating model we have.”

🔧 Hands-on: Sihaam: “We know every step of the production process and everything around it. We can always step in if needed.” Safuan: “You can’t afford to sit behind a desk all day. You have to know what is going on in the company.”

👩‍💻 “Software helps us scale,” Safuan adds at the end. “Compared to before, when we had to do everything manually, all those hours would slow things down tremendously, not to mention labour costs. We wouldn’t be able to scale at our current pace.”

🍲 Oh Poké is raising the bar for Hawaiian street food. The brand is rapidly conquering urban areas and gathering a loyal local following. Its ambition is to become the benchmark for poké, and they are well on their way. Shadlee Ismail

They more than deserve their spot in our article:

’47 Scaling Restaurants In Scandinavia To Keep An Eye On (Because They Are Awesome)’ https://get.apicbase.com/scaling-restaurants-scandinavia/

See what other concepts & brands made the list:

🇩🇰 Denmark,
🇳🇴 Norway,
🇸🇪 Sweden and
🇫🇮 Finland