As with any invention or idea, it comes out of opportunity. You see something that doesn’t exist and you fill that gap. For us, it was creating the first brand of gourmet shawerma. We saw that there were tons of regular shawerma shops but not one that had gone beyond the norm. That was about 12 years ago and it’s been a hell of a journey since then.
Learning curves
It took so long for the idea to take shape partly because of fate and partly because of the lack of funding. Back then, there was an abundance of ways to find financing for cars or houses or other such items but there was nothing for those that needed money to start a business. 12 years ago, the business environment in the UAE was not geared for startup businesses. Then, eight years ago, we went and met the Sheikh Mohammed Establishment (now called Dubai SME), explained everything to them and since then, they’ve been huge supports of Wild Peeta. We are now in our third year of operation and it has been highly turbulent because of the many learning curves we’ve faced.
Practice makes perfect
We tested a lot of things. As a small business, you are able to have an idea and test it out and you learn from these tests. The statistics for a startup business are really poor in the UAE. They say that there is a failure rate of between 50-70% with small businesses not making it past the 3-5 year mark. It’s not easy being a small business in the UAE because there is no legislation for small businesses. Being grouped with big businesses is not fair because they have more money and resources at their disposal. We believe that unless this is addressed, we won’t see enough small businesses entering the market and we stand to lose some amazing ideas that small businesses can bring to the market. It’s simple – does the UAE only want imported brands? Does the UAE not want to see local brands and local ideas?
Meeting expectations
There’s a lot of hype that surrounds Wild Peeta. Sometimes it works for us and other times it doesn’t. How it works for us is that everybody always wants to go to Wild Peeta. How it works against us is that, sometimes, expectations are extremely high and we have to remind everybody that we’re still new. We are a small business that’s only been around for three years and we’re trying to make the best of the means that we have.
Being different
Two things that you notice when you walk in to the outlet are: one, the food and two, our followers. We make everything in our kitchen, by hand, with fresh ingredients and no preservatives. We don’t own a deep fryer! Everything we get is from the Middle East and we put all of that together to create our menu. A really good hearty soup, our gourmet shawermas and our signature drinks. For instance, our coffee is from a brand called RAW that sells organic fair trade Dubai roasted coffee. In terms of our cold drinks, we make our own and we’re a big fan of tea-based drinks.
Life hasn’t been the same
Wild Peeta has changed our lives tremendously. For one, it showed us how resilient we can be. We came in to this with a small budget and so we had to find innovative ways to achieve what we wanted to. For most, moving from a paid job to this is not easy but for us, we didn’t think much about it. It was just hell, yeah! And even though it’s extremely challenging to be a small business in the UAE, we have never been happier. We believe that happiness comes from doing something that you love, have passion for and believe in deeply. Plus it helps that there are 10,000 people encouraging us and keeping us grounded constantly!
Just the beginning
I think today, more than ever, we know that Wild Peeta has the potential to be in every major city in the world. It makes us feel that there’s no such thing as impossible. Impossible was when they said that man couldn’t fly or couldn’t be in space! We feel that man can do anything, so why not? Why not have a brand created in the UAE and exported to every country? Why not reverse it?
Involving our customers
Our social media followers have been a huge part of our lives even before we opened the outlet. We invited them to help in the decision making. We asked them for advice about the drinks we served and the layout of the store and almost everything. We figured that the more people we asked for advice, the better we would be. Over three years, we have built a following of over 10,000 people and these aren’t random people. We grow our followers, have conversations with them and take time out of our day to involve them with Wild Peeta’s life and, in the process, these 10,000 people feel like they are a part of the Wild Peeta existence.
Making decisions
People tend to ask us why would we want to involve 10,000 people in our decision making process. We think that it makes us better people and it makes Wild Peeta a better brand. We’re doing this for ourselves and our customers and if we don’t listen to our customers, why do it?
Community involvement
We have all sorts of events happening at Wild Peeta. There was a Dubomedy comedy event, we celebrated Social Media Day, and clubs like the Dubai Anime Club and the Twitter Book Club meet at our outlet. Wild Peeta is like a focal point, an opportunity to connect all these people in the UAE. These area all community initiatives and we don’t want to take credit. The only thing that we do is bring them together. We create opportunities for the people to share. We’re just grateful that the community has adopted Wild Peeta and considered it their own. It would have tougher if the community hadn’t got together.
Success of social media
Wild Peeta’s social media influence ranks among one of the highest in the UAE and it’s growing among the Middle East. The result of having such a strong influence is that brands look to us as partners to try to engage the community. For instance, Sony got in touch with us to collaborate and we look forward to more such collaborations.
Quick Q’s
1.Where would you like to see Wild Peeta in 5 years?
We would like to have a handful of outlets in the GCC. We have a target but we’re looking at a certain number of outlets and a strong base in the GCC before moving out. Every day we get contacted to open up Wild Peeta outlets across the Americas, Asia and Europe but we aren’t going to do it until we have a solid foothold in the GCC.
2.What would you do if you weren’t running a restaurant?
I really don’t know but running a restaurant has definitely taught us that life is too short to do anything that you’re not passionate about. We’d travel. We love travelling and we’d travel all the time if we didn’t have the restaurant. One way that we’ve managed to incorporate travelling is by launching Peeta Planet. Peeta Planet is our way of fusing social media, travelling and television. It’s us travelling around the world but guided by our followers. Our followers tell us the best places to go and we go there!
3.What is the Wild Peeta motto?
Local. Social. Fresh.
By Sharon Carvalho
