Egyptian Restaurants Attract Customers with 'No for Innovation' Motto

A 'suhur' meal, which is served before dawn during the holy month of Ramadan, in Cairo on May 31, 2018. (MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP/Getty Images)
A 'suhur' meal, which is served before dawn during the holy month of Ramadan, in Cairo on May 31, 2018. (MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP/Getty Images)
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Egyptian Restaurants Attract Customers with 'No for Innovation' Motto

A 'suhur' meal, which is served before dawn during the holy month of Ramadan, in Cairo on May 31, 2018. (MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP/Getty Images)
A 'suhur' meal, which is served before dawn during the holy month of Ramadan, in Cairo on May 31, 2018. (MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP/Getty Images)

In his movie “The Danish Experience”, Egyptian actor Adel Imam promoted two popular, local restaurants named “Zizo” and “Baha”. But despite the fame they gained over the past 20 years thanks to Imam’s effect, the two restaurants specializing in eastern food refused innovation.

Unlike the creative marketing ideas that restaurants invest in to increase their revenues, many restaurants haven’t even considered promotional tools to lure customers, preferring to maintain their current, traditional look that powered their fame.

Certain Egyptian restaurants, mostly those considered popular, have acquired a remarkable reputation that lures even non-Egyptian customers. Despite this fame, they are eager to preserve the traditional appearance of their beginnings, and the menu they are known for, refusing to change their originality in an attempt to maintain their success and profit margins at the same time.

Whether in Cairo, which embraces thousands of restaurants or in Alexandria, which attracts thousands of visitors every day, there are many examples of this type of restaurant that seduce people from all social and age categories with their “non-innovated” ambiances.

Since their establishment several decades ago, “Zizo” in the Jammaliah area, and “Baha” in the El Sayeda Zeinab district, have maintained their original concept, rejecting innovation ideas, and insisting that they “don’t have other branches”.

Despite that, both restaurants attract ambassadors and tourists looking to taste the “Egyptian food experience”. All their visitors, locals and non-Egyptians, sit at tables in the street, which gives the experience a more popular touch. El Sayeda district also houses “Al Jahsh” restaurant known for its local beans and falafel served in a simple, unsophisticated way. Its customers are from all social classes, they eat in the street as well. Although some reviews on the world-know travel website TripAdvisor slam the restaurant’s hygiene, celebrities and tourists keep visiting it to taste the original, Egyptian dishes.

A few steps away from Cairo’s Ramses Square, a banner reading “On God’s Blessing” draws people’s attention to a simply-decorated, crowded restaurant that serves cheap, yet tasty liver and sausage sandwiches. Known as the “King of Original Liver Sandwiches”, the restaurant, which was established in the 1980s, has always adopted a low-price policy, so it can make the highest profit. The liver sandwiches it serves are, without exaggeration, the cheapest in Egypt.

In contrast, other restaurants that opted for innovations and changes, including the “Abu Rami Grill Restaurant”, failed and lost a lot of their customers.

The same trend applies in Alexandria, in which many restaurants, especially those serving seafood, like “Shaaban of Fish” in the Al-Manshiyah area, are known for low-key setups, funny names, wooden tables, and cheap plates serving unique combinations.

The restaurant is very popular among Alexandrians. Although the city has many seafood restaurants, and most of them are located right on the sea along the Cornish, Shaaban’s customers insist on visiting it in a narrow alley to enjoy its popular dishes.

The restaurant’s owners have kept its original design but chose to innovate with a new branch that targets different types of customers.

Shaaban has a rival, though. “Houda Dongol”, located in the narrow alley in the Azarita area, also lures seafood lovers with its professional cooking and affordable prices despite its chaotic, low-key setup and location.

The traditional concept is also seen in the “Loul Fortress” restaurant overseeing the sea. A wooden design that reflects the Egyptian, popular spirit, and attracts visitors with its simple décor, rural, wooden benches, homemade fish dishes, warm welcoming of its manager Om Mayyada, and its well-known mint tea.

“Indeed, many restaurants reject the innovation idea, mostly because 95 percent of their owners are elderlies and unconvinced with the importance of social-media-driven updates. Those people can’t convoy advancement because they don’t have the needed mentality, or they might have concerns about innovation so they keep their businesses like they are. In contrast, we see about only 5 percent of business owners who consider innovation and keeping up with the industry’s changes,” Mohammed Yousri, e-marketing manager of several restaurants in Cairo, told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Yousri doesn’t agree with those alleging that “non-innovated ambiances” attract more audience, noting that this factor is a sort of mental relief for some customers, and that’s why we often see middle-aged and older people in such places.

“On the other hand, the younger ones are always looking for innovation. Restaurants adopting this management concept are often the first to close their doors despite their long-term fame. Even by maintaining their traditional touch, time will pass, and new, competing names will emerge and gradually lure people. From a marketing perspective, restaurants’ reluctance to innovate or update is a weakness and a key factor that can threaten the existence of the biggest names,” he explained.

“Marketing rules say the audience like constant renewal, and with the new generation affected by social media, restaurants must seek innovation to meet clients’ needs. Restaurants sticking to their old, traditional concepts have no future vision or aspirations, so they will definitely lose their younger customers, and thus lose the competition sooner or later,” Yousri concluded.



EU Monitor: 2024 'Virtually Certain' to Be Hottest Year on Record

Weather extremes in October included deadly flooding in Spain. JOSE JORDAN / AFP
Weather extremes in October included deadly flooding in Spain. JOSE JORDAN / AFP
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EU Monitor: 2024 'Virtually Certain' to Be Hottest Year on Record

Weather extremes in October included deadly flooding in Spain. JOSE JORDAN / AFP
Weather extremes in October included deadly flooding in Spain. JOSE JORDAN / AFP

This year is "virtually certain" to be the hottest in recorded history with warming above 1.5C, EU climate monitor Copernicus said Thursday, days before nations are due to gather for crunch UN climate talks.
The European agency said the world was passing a "new milestone" of temperature records that should serve to accelerate action to cut planet-heating emissions at the UN negotiations in Azerbaijan next week, AFP said.
Last month, marked by deadly flooding in Spain and Hurricane Milton in the United States, was the second hottest October on record, with average global temperatures second only to the same period in 2023.
Copernicus said 2024 would likely be more than 1.55 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 average -- the period before the industrial-scale burning of fossil fuels.
This does not amount to a breach of the Paris deal, which strives to limit global warming to below 2C and preferably 1.5C, because that is measured over decades and not individual years.
"It is now virtually certain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record and the first year of more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels," said Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Deputy Director Samantha Burgess.
"This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming Climate Change Conference, COP29."
Wild weather
The UN climate negotiations in Azerbaijan, which will set the stage for a new round of crucial carbon-cutting targets, will take place in the wake of the United States election victory by Donald Trump.
Trump, a climate change denier, pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement during his first presidency -- and while his successor Joe Biden took the United States back in, he has threatened to do so again.
Meanwhile, average global temperatures have reached new peaks, as have concentrations of planet-heating gases in the atmosphere.
Scientists say the safer 1.5C limit is rapidly slipping out of reach, while stressing that every tenth of a degree of temperature rise heralds progressively more damaging impacts.
Last month the UN said the current pace of climate action would result in a catastrophic 3.1C of warming this century, while all current climate pledges taken in full would still amount to a devastating 2.6C temperature rise.
Global warming is not just about rising temperatures, but the knock-on effect of all the extra heat in the atmosphere and seas.
Warmer air can hold more water vapor, and warmer oceans mean greater evaporation, resulting in more intense downpours and storms.
In a month of weather extremes, October saw above-average rainfall across swathes of Europe, as well as parts of China, the US, Brazil and Australia, Copernicus said.
The US is also experiencing ongoing drought, which affected record numbers of people, the EU monitor added.
Copernicus said average sea surface temperatures in the area it monitors were the second highest on record for the month of October.
C3S uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations to aid its calculations.
Copernicus records go back to 1940 but other sources of climate data such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons allow scientists to expand their conclusions using evidence from much deeper in the past.
Climate scientists say the period being lived through right now is likely the warmest the earth has been for the last 100,000 years, back at the start of the last Ice Ages.