Can Peace Deliver a Boost for UAE's F&B Sector?

**Tim Elliott** (0:00)
It's the Morning Drive. Just after months of regional uncertainty, UE food and beverage operators are looking ahead with some renewed confidence, I think it's fair to say. Signs of diplomatic progress are fueling hopes for stronger tourism, consumer spending, and business growth in our region. Joining us this morning, Paul Clifford is the co-founder of Roster, which works with FMB brands across the region. And Lisa Knight is the owner of Cafe Isan.
And hopefully, we can get a view from both the industry and the restaurant front lines. Paul, Lisa, welcome. Nice to see you both.

**Paul Clifford** (0:38)
Good morning.

**Tim Elliott** (0:39)
Paul, can I start with you?
It's not even a week yet, I mean, I realize. But how quickly does the sentiment of diplomatic progress, which is fair what we're seeing, how quickly does that turn into actual footfall for the restaurants that you work with?

**Paul Clifford** (0:57)
I think the footfall comes. I think it's the tourism part that is missing right now. I think there's still been footfall from residents. As long as we saw in COVID, and I hate to go back to that, but it's as good a blueprint as we have for what's been happening now.
When people could go out, they wanted to go out.
So at this point, I think what's happened recently is people weren't stopped from going out. Apart from when there was alerts to stay at home. And people who live here and still felt safe enough to go out did want to do that. Where they were going probably changed a bit. So they weren't necessarily going to the big destinations, high rises, the Palm Jumeirahs, the DIFCs. They were going somewhere closer. They were going somewhere that felt a little bit more local. They were going somewhere that maybe didn't mean as much travel or as much expense.
And maybe they could get home more quickly and have a more wholesome time than a big lavish night out with dancers and all of that kind of stuff. So I think that kind of dining has been continuing. Some places more successfully than others, and Lisa will tell us from her experience, I'm sure, how that went for her. What's missing is the tourists that go to those big ticket places. And I think residents are going to them less, and tourists are the ones that will pick up that slack. So this week, the sentiment has bred excitement in the industry, for sure. Even last night, I had an event, and people were coming in from the industry going, did you see the news today? The UK has reduced its travel warning, saying people can come here with a long list of caveats, I think. But they were so excited about that happening, because that really will be the turning point for a more widespread amount of businesses here, and restaurants.

**Tim Elliott** (2:49)
It feels like that, doesn't it? It feels like there's a growth in conferences.
It's really hard to put your finger on, because there's kind of something in the air, I suppose. And there's no science behind that thinking. It's just kind of literally finger place it. Lisa, you are on and have been, I guess it's been very tough time. You're on the front lines at Cafe Isan. How's the last few months been?

**Lisa Knight** (3:16)
Well, March was quite disastrous. You know, there was overnight, there was, across our three branches, all in all, there was 40, 50% drop in footfall, which was enormous.
But it improved, months on months. April, that minus figure was round about 30, 30 to 40 So it had improved by about 10%. But slowly, by the third month, we're down really only about 20%. A couple of the branches, now 12%, which is pretty good for June. So it definitely indicates growing confidence in people coming back out. But I do agree with Paul, though. We are definitely still missing the tourism link. For our restaurant, we're very much community focused.
But we have maybe 20, 30% of our base comes from tourism. So that's missing for us as well. So we're not really in complete recovery. But is it moving forward? Absolutely.

**Tim Elliott** (4:20)
Have you had to change your pricing or adapt the concept in any way?

**Lisa Knight** (4:26)
The concept, no. I mean, we were actually built to weather this kind of storm. We actually did quite well even during COVID by offering good value community based concepts. So I think, if anything, people have looked to concepts like ours during this situation. But honestly speaking, have we had to adjust pricing? We have recently. We've had to increase a few menu items between one to three deerhams per dish.