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Food Gossip & Rumors

Alshaya Closing Down Some Restaurants

Over the weekend I was in Avenues for work (the mall is closed FYI) so I decided to walk around and see if it was true that Alshaya was closing down some of its restaurants. Inspired Edibles had posted a list on Instagram of the brands that were closing which included:

400 Gradi
Alforno
Blaze Pizza
Bridge Water Chocolate
Cafe COCO
Castania
Cleo
Le Pain Quotidien
P.F. Chang’s (Phase 1)
Spontini Pizza
Veranda

Turns out it’s partially true. Other than Blaze Pizza and P.F. Chang’s, all the restaurants listed above had been closed down with their logos removed and the storefronts boarded up. I guess the two I’m gonna miss the most are Alforno and Spontini. When Alforno first opened I used to go there a lot with my family, and Spontini, well I kinda liked their pizzas even though I know a lot didn’t.

But, if a giant like Alshaya has difficulty sustaining a restaurant during this difficult period in a mall they basically own, you can only imagine how other smaller businesses must be doing.

60 replies on “Alshaya Closing Down Some Restaurants”

I heard the were closing down few of the brands itself and not only the outlets in avenues. But anyways the main reason why alshaya felt the pinch so hard, is because they had just invested in several new projects that dug deep into their balance sheets. For kuwait the acquiring the sea front was one of their biggest splurges plus investment put into furnishing all of those restaurants.

Unfortunately due to unprecedented circumstances they damaged the name and rep they built throughout the years. By unconventionally cutting salaries and firing people. Stuff like this would be expected from SME’s not from big names like alshaya.

I was fired 3 month ago from Alshaya after leaving a stable job with a good pay to join them after 8 interveiws and 3 month of paperwork to transfer my residency and turned down other offers, now I have no job for 6 month no compensation my residency cant be renewed running out of money to support my family all what I got is a phone call from HR with an attitude saying guess what we screwed up your career and life plans because Alshaya will go broke if he payed my humble salary. الحمد لله على كل شئ

I feel you brother. The exact same thing happened to me back in 2016 exactly after a year I was employed with them. This was their yearly routine of hiring and firing and I was one of victims in that game. Life has never been the same post that…but I’m glad I’m not part of that company any more and also advise any of my friends/ colleagues to steer away from them…

The new world system that targeted is to break down small business even medium businesses. I think that ” survival for the strongest and fittest it would be the motto of new era.no consolation for the Dwarves.

Honestly im more worried about the little guys, I have no sympathy for big business like alshaya, theyll be fine.

Regardless how big the business is, any restaurant that do not try to survive in this situation will be in a big trouble after Corona.

The business may be fine but there are more jobs lost in the course of the action. And they are stuck here until the airports open and are without any income until then.

Gotcha. Sorry, the way I read your post was that all of the ones except for Chang’s and Blaze had been closed down previously, but the other two we’re on the chopping block.

Thanks for the response!

Yes ur absolutely right…now the reputation of ALSHAYA gone in zero level..worse then other small business companies..

Being a former Alshaya for more than 5 years, I can tell you for a fact that 90% of employees affected (salary cuts/termination) are always low to mid earners (1000 kd tops salaries)
It’s sad really to see such a big corporation with such low values. Letting go of frontliners who got you where you are at the first speed bump and letting your kings and queens sit at the top, completely unaffected when their salaries go up to 18,000 kd (keeping in mind that their incompetencies didn’t help the situation either)

Alshaya’s bubble was waiting to be burst for a long time now. I somehow felt they overdid things by opening up multiple outlets of the same brand (sooo many pinkberries) and some very similar concepts. Many of their brands are nothing great (like potbelly). It seems they just opened up restaurants since they had so much space for themselves.
The sad part of this burst bubble is the people employed that got affected

Said ppl about Kodak and PWC. Bad reasoning and again remember there are real people being affected in the bargain.

I wasnt talking to you but responding to James above who responded to your comment. Stop hyperventilating and breathe indeed.

Let’s not judge alshaya as a company, this pandemic has affected alots of companies now are not paying the staff and most are terminated so the situation is understandable.

I’m no expert here, but pretty sure close-downs for Al Shaya might not necessarily mean forever. It’s smart to invest the spaces with other businesses that could generate steady income for the company while they focus on their core and successful brands until the market recovers. Then they can start reopening these or other brands again when the the time is right.

Out of all the places that were allegedly closing, Blaze Pizza and Le Pain are the only ones that I kept returning to. The rest I either never been or tried it once and never went back to. But that’s just me.

LPQ and Blaze were nice quaint places and situated right next to the theaters and close by to Xcite and others. It would be sad to see them both go

You’re right, the post is a bit confusing. I just reread. You’re leading with the list which includes Blaze. I think you should change the follow up from ‘turns out it’s true’ to ‘turns out it’s partly true’

Thank james for your empathy once I got the news of Alshaya firing just at the begining of the covid 19 issue even before it was called a pandemic me and 300 more at the same day and nearly 500 others under the hiring process with no alternative for income or residency transfer. It was a shock for me and still cant beleive how inhuman the CEO decision was. Now I feel lost dont know what to do in such hard circumstances.

simply put, these businesses were not doing as well as others. Alshaya investing in the seafront had nothing to do with close-downs. Alshaya has been diversifying away from retail for the past few years regardless of the current situation. This is an opportune time to restructure at a more rapid rate and renegotiate leases with landlords globally. They are opening 70 new hotels globally in the next 12 years as well as a few large real estate projects in KSA. They have always closed down locations and rebranded. this will continue. Any company with big retail ops can’t survive without revenue, That’s how you cover expenses. when you pay salaries for 4 months with no income, its either you shed weight, make cuts, or go down. The bigger you are the harder it is to do.

If Kuwait is serious about the demographic imbalance, more closures will be the norm. Low wages are what allow us to enjoy a Starbucks branch every 10 meters along with this plethora of franchises. Wages and benefits will have to increase dramatically in the private sector to attract nationalization, and that – along with foreign labor quotas – will force businesses to adjust their business models. Everyone keeps telling me that after Corona this demographic plan will disappear, so I guess we will have to wait and see.

I was work that alshaya company past 11 years I was work as a chef I. Alforno restaurant really so sad to heard that best company in the middle east best home brand pizza and pastas…

Are those places closing down just in Kuwait or internationally? I mean the avenues is owned by Alshaya if im not mistaken so rent wouldnt be an issue for these restaurants.

many of these places were failing far before the corona, it is like the a380. They were gonna fail but corona pulled the plug on their life support. coco was grand but after a manager change it went down hill. Veranda used to be a truly out incredible place to eat it reminded me of an affordable Alain Ducasse at the plaza hotel in paris then it just became a place with average food, extremely snobby waiters and a high price tag though the view did make it worth it. Bridge water was a failure from day one, kuwaitis dont do american chocolate even hershey’s barely sells here. i can keep going but they all were failures, i think society is moving to more local shops. local cafes, restaurants and farmers are growing exponentially.

I would agree with some of your observations but that was the alshaya model – experiment with brands across the cost spectrum and shut them down after a while of they didn’t work out. Bridge and Teavana are good examples of brands that should have gone a while back. But truth be told, I think their ill timed investment in Arabella, then moving it to the sea front and then the Covid onset, did them in. I pity all the people who’ve been trenched.

Teavana is a bad example, it closed down because the brand got bought out by Starbucks. But yeah I always saw Alshaya using the Kuwait market to beta test brands and if they succeeded, they’d open them around the region and Europe where the real money is.

idk, kuwait has a very specific palate that really doesnt work anywhere else as the o.g arab tastes have really blended with how well travelled people are. i have seen kuwaiti women in kimonos in the avenues, men beduin a.f eat sashimi. things that wouldnt sell anywhere else sells here while things that sell here wont sell anywhere else. my best example could be those high heels that had no heel that everyone seemed to be wearing to malls a few years ago or those hijabs that try to look like 1940s hollywood films stars. i think the avenues is a testing area of brands for the kuwaiti market. it has a huge pool of the kuwaiti market looking to spend everything they own. i highly doubt kuwait will ever be a litmus for anything other than the kuwaiti market. plus the real money is in the gcc, the only other areas with the same purchasing power are major global cities gulf people have high wages and low saving rates plus low living costs.

A month before the corona thingy I took my kids to koshi pashi in the avenues, to my surprise it was closed and most of the restaurants beside it like red lobster, the olive garden and the Indian restaurant, out of 9 restaurants 2 were still open, though they have a great location looking over the grand avenues, I asked but nobody knew why.
Kushi pashi was always full and a favorite for Saudis and Emiratis.

kosebasi closed down a couple of years ago in Kuwait, it didn’t do well as a brand.

But all those restaurants on that floor though have been closed because Avenues is reworking the space for something else supposedly. That location isn’t a great one and pretty much died after Phase 4 open. Prime locations are on the ground floor.

Alshaya is one of the biggest company in GCC as well as other countries, I wouldn’t worry about that much their closures, they banked enough to survive for next 10 years but people who worked for them to be in this position could be looked after better they do and did, I am worried about those employees

Big company = big expenses.

I wont stand here and defend AlShaya for what happened to a lot of his employees (allegedly). But if you dont have the liquidity to pay salaries and keep your company afloat during this crisis you are not gonna come out of this alive.

While we would all like to see everyone keep their job and no one get fired.. imagine how many would lose their jobs if the whole company went under.

note: I say allegedly cause I only heard about this through word of mouth.

Alshaya is actually the worst company to work with work. It is perfect example of modern day slavery. They have all this SOP rules n regulations but nobody follows besides the higher management team acts like they are on the thorne n makes you feel follow the orders or go home. I worked with them for 2 yrs n i was literally in stress and mentally disturbed.

So Castania will no longer exist in Kuwait? they used to have two stores in The Avenues

I have always wondered why they didn’t expand it to other GCC countries, i think it would’ve been a huge success…

Heard Alshaya has closed down some brands like Bodyshop, Solaris, Vision Express in late 2024. Any restaurants as well? Does anyone know?

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