Sponsored: Ahmed Alajmi, founder of Takara Hospitality Group (THG), is a trailblazer in Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning dining scene, blending his engineering background with an innate passion for gastronomy

“I come from a family that has always appreciated good homemade food made with local ingredients and minimal imports. One dish that I particularly enjoyed was my mother’s Molokhia, which I could eat in large quantities,” he shared. Alajmi’s professional roots lie in aeronautical engineering, specialising in the construction of commercial aircraft engines. His studies and career took him to cities like New York, London, and Paris, where he developed a global perspective. Upon returning home, he often wondered why the Kingdom lacked high-end dining options, particularly in Khobar, despite Bahrain’s proximity and thriving culinary scene. Undeterred by the risks, he and his team launched TAKARA in 2019, the region’s first Japanese restaurant.

How do you strike the balance between introducing new culinary experiences and ensuring familiarity? 

Concurrently, we employ focus groups to gauge reactions across different socio-economic levels, always beginning with the question, ‘how much would you pay for this experience?’. We also ask ourselves what our clients want before planning a new restaurant. Our growth strategy focuses on filling market gaps and meeting local tastes, rather than assuming customer preferences.

With over 18.8 million Saudis in the country, 63 per cent of whom are under 30, we knew that we had to cater to their interests in fashion, experiences, social media and lifestyle.

Every day, we ask ourselves ‘why would people choose our place or product?’. We proceed once we grasp our unique selling point and its market appeal. This is one of our success keys, too.

What advice would you give aspiring entrepreneurs entering a completely new industry? 

Remember to conduct a thorough market study. Do not just assume that opening a coffee shop will be successful. Consider the type of coffee you want to use, the location, competition from other coffee shops, customer preferences for tea, and even details like the colour of pens your staff will use to take orders. After that, assess the financial viability of your plan. If it looks promising, proceed. If not, revise your study to identify potential changes while sticking to your main concept.

It is important to have backup plans in case of delays and a contingency fund to cover at least the first 6 months of operation. Set clear deadlines and enforce them by including penalties in contracts for late deliveries.

Lastly, do not let anyone discourage you. If your study is comprehensive, things should go smoothly.

What trends do you foresee shaping the F&B industry in the Kingdom? 

Unfortunately, fine dining is expected to become increasingly niche Worldwide. A decade ago, diners were focused on the left side of the menus, where the names of the dishes and ingredients were. The price was accepted depending on the reputation of the restaurant or the neighbourhood. Today, with widespread internet access, customers compare prices across restaurants. This is where the guest journey makes a difference.

We live in a market that is more driven by price than ever before. People are looking for additional valuable experiences. In this experience-driven market where people buy products or services to have a certain feeling, it is no longer enough to provide them with service, food, and drink. Customers want to transport their senses into the various dimensions of happiness where indelible memories are created. That created memories and post-experience, which are the ones that made them come back one time and another.

We anticipate a growing demand for social dining spaces in the Kingdom and a significant interest in upper casual dining concepts featuring reputable brands.

Could you share some insights into the challenges and successes of embedding sustainability into your operations? 

Importing ingredients into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not an easy task. In addition, getting the correct ones for such different cuisines as Japanese, American and Persian was a big headache. Then is when we decide to do it ourselves and open it to others.

We created SANTIAM. A company that is expert in sourcing, storing, and distributing high-quality food products to both the food service and retail markets in Saudi Arabia.  It is worth mentioning that SANTIAM only imports products that do not have a match in the local market.  Also, we only deal with reliable sources and exclusively supply products that cater to the needs of a diverse customer base. At the same time, we are on the road to developing an informatics answer that we believe will be the answer to many who want to be connected to local suppliers directly from wherever they are located.

We Saudis are extremely nationalistic. We love our country and we are blindly aligned with the guidance of our leaders towards converting Saudi into the number 1 destination in the world. Local food has become increasingly popular in the Kingdom, as not only do customers appreciate the freshest quality produce, but they also value knowing they are supporting regional farmers while enjoying flavours that are known by their palates. An invaluable advantage to sourcing local ingredients for your restaurant is cost-effectiveness.

Supporting local vendors who have created a product specifically for your restaurant can help you save money, as opposed to purchasing from bigger, often international suppliers. Moreover, reducing transportation costs by buying locally also helps businesses cut superfluous logistical overheads and spares them the obligation of paying national import fees.

Reducing food waste is an important aspect of THG’s sustainable restaurant management. Food waste not only has a significant economic impact on the restaurant industry, but it also harms the environment and communities struggling with food insecurity. THG sourcing local ingredients helps to reduce food waste by ensuring that we only purchase the amount of food needed, as well as reducing the risk of spoilage due to long-distance transportation. Also, remember that if a supplier does not receive a product will source it in the local market and re-sell it to you with a bigger margin.  

Your “no boss” philosophy and focus on team retention are unique. How has this approach influenced THG’s culture and performance? 

At Takara Hospitality Group, we have a phrase on each of our restaurant doors that says, “Through this door WALK the best staff in the world.” Finding trained and passionate personnel to work in hospitality, especially in the post-COVID era, is not an easy task, all workers in the sector still have fresh in their memories “what it was like to stay at home and what the true price of their job is”. Something that we realized from the beginning of the Group is that most companies hire extremely experienced profiles and try to fit them into their organization charts. Instead, we decided to hire individuals with a desire to learn and train each other.

After that, we work with a premise – we do not have a boss, and we are all bosses and give our opinions for the company’s benefit. That is maybe why our staff retention rate exceeds 90%. We believe that attracting talent to our company, and any other, is based on two premises: Firstly, respect and value what you already have inside. It is better to increase loyalty than to hire someone who prevents it from growing. Secondly, if you have to go to the market, hire someone who honestly wants to grow with you. While completed profiles can be spectacular, those yet to be completed will always be more ambitious and can help your business grow. We let each candidate who wishes to join our family know that if in the future, they decide to WALK out our doors, they will do so much more completely than when they entered and be part of the best staff in the world. However, always remember something, there is only one boss, the customer, who can fire anyone in the company, from the chairman down, by choosing to spend his money elsewhere.

How do you plan to ensure THG stays relevant and competitive in a price-sensitive market? 

We always search for gaps in the market. Instead of importing brands, we create versions that suit local tastes. It is important to note that we never copy other products. We ask ourselves daily, “Why would people choose our place or product?” Once we understand our unique selling point and whether it will sell or not, we move accordingly. That is one of our key factors for success. At THG, we ensure that we cater to our customers’ tastes. For example, our Japanese restaurant, TAKARA, respects traditional Japanese preparation but also incorporates local ingredients such as Kunafa, Za’atar, and Arabic ghee to tailor to the taste of the local crowd. We use 90% proximity products to cater to the customers’ love for their country. This approach has helped us maintain a high level of customer satisfaction and keep our venues full.

We applied the same formula to all of our venues and constantly asked ourselves what our clients crave before even placing a single letter in our draft of a venue. The idea is to grow by filling gaps of what is not there and, above all, what is required by local taste.

We are not simply adding something because “we believe customers will like it.” We usually look for what the market is lacking. There are always culinary gaps that can be explored. We do not rely only on, for example, “opening a Korean Cuisine simply because there is no Korean offering available.”

We sustain our work with deep feasibility studies and, above all, with market polls. We conduct several polls among leaders of opinion and influencers depending on the level of cuisine and segment we want to enter before even placing a name on the venue or even start looking for a location. At the same time, we conduct focus groups to see reactions at different socio-economical levels to the product and always ask the same question first: what would you pay for this experience? When we have that answer, we proceed to see if it is economically reliable to be added.

What role do you see THG playing in promoting Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, particularly in terms of cultural and economic diversification? 

From a cultural point of view, Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of the Islamic religion, which is practised by around 1.5 billion people worldwide (22% of the world’s population), who travel to Mecca for pilgrimage, professing love and peace at least 1 time on their life.

If we add to this the investment of 550 billion dollars by the government in new destinations by 2030, including NEOM’s 5 stages and the Red Sea project in the north.   In the capital, Riyadh, what was done around the birth city of the Kingdom At-Turaif (which many known as Bujairi in Diriyah that keeps expanding), in addition to the New Murabba which will be spectacular and The Edge of the World in Jebel Fihrayn. In the east, we have Al-Qara Hill for example, and Al Uqayr, in addition to the marvellous Fanateer Beaches in Jubail and the coastline of Khobar.  The magnificence and art of Jeddah in the west, and to end the magnificence of AlUla in Medina. We can assure you that there is much to see and experience in Saudi Arabia!
At THG, we are constantly in touch with all the main players involved in these mentioned projects, and we are proud to say that the interest is mutual and ongoing. They view us as their partners.

It is a well-known fact that Saudi Arabia’s economy has been heavily reliant on oil over the years. However, in the last two decades, there has been a noticeable increase in the non-oil private sector’s contribution to the country’s economy. This growth can be attributed to the rise in oil prices, which led the government to promote private-sector activity by increasing spending.

In 2021, a new directive was announced which requires companies that wish to contract with Saudi Arabia to establish their regional headquarters within the country, preferably in Riyadh, by 2024. Companies that comply with this directive will be eligible for tax exemptions and other incentives.

The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is the world’s fifth-largest private investment fund, has recently made several investments in companies such as Facebook, Starbucks, Disney, Boeing, Citigroup, Live Nation, Marriott, and several European energy companies, as well as Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL) and Hambro Perks Ltd.’s Oryx fund. The Vision 2030 initiative aims to diversify non-oil exports and increase the share of non-oil GDP to 50% by 2030. Key sectors that will help achieve this goal include finance, insurance, transportation, communications, non-oil manufacturing, and agriculture. Lastly, there are over 1,500 companies, including THG, and more than 250,000 products that have the “Saudi Made” recognition.

Looking back on your journey, is there a specific moment or milestone that reaffirmed your decision to build THG? 

I remember clearly that morning on March 15th, 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced every single restaurant in the Kingdom to close down. Just three months earlier, in December 2019 I had invested every coin into opening my dream—a fine-dining Japanese restaurant in Al Khobar, the city that owns my heart.

As a business continuity-oriented person, I thought to myself, “It took me a lifetime to put this project together. Let us keep the team and wait for this to pass. We will make it happen afterwards.” By August 2020, restrictions were lifted. My team was still with me, and proudly, I must say that 90% of them are still with us five years later.

I vividly remember standing outside with my bank account in the negative, when one of our waiters—who is now one of our fearless leaders—said, “Boss, the worst is behind us. Now we will turn this place into the best restaurant in Saudi Arabia.”

A lot has happened since then (including TAKARA winning the best Restaurant in Saudi Arabia). Five years have passed, and our group has grown by focusing on concepts that resonate with local tastes while carefully managing our finances and expansion plans. Takara Hospitality Group now operates notable brands, including TAKARA, Sold Out, Ziba, Sushi & Co., Hakuna Patata, and SANTIAM, all of which are known for their quality and culturally aligned dining experiences.

Just a week ago, we opened our sixth venue, Sold Out Dhahran, which was packed from minute one. A couple of days before we approved our 2025 business plan which includes a minimum of six new locations and three new brands in the next 12 months across Saudi Arabia and the GCC.

With THG’s expansion plans already underway, could you share more about the upcoming projects or restaurant concepts you’re most excited about in the next few years? 

I can mention three major projects in the Kingdom. The first one is ROSHN, which is a giga-project aimed at increasing the homeownership rate in Saudi Arabia to 70% by the end of this decade.   It is a technology-driven project with over 200 million square meters of land bank. The second one is Qiddiya, located southwest of Riyadh. This giga-project will create a cultural, sports, and entertainment destination to enhance the quality of life for the Kingdom’s residents. Third but not least, is the Jeddah Tower, which is expected to be the world’s tallest building, surpassing the Burj Khalifa, with an estimated height of one kilometre. It is worth mentioning also, what Dhahran is doing with the Rig, a world-first amusement park to be built on an offshore platform in the Arabian Gulf.

Our team is closely monitoring the market and has plans to expand our already successful brands and open new ones in all significant cities in the Middle East in the next 30 months. Our goal is to have at least 11 new locations by September 2026, while maintaining a structured and financially sound approach.

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