When the Swiss butter restaurant of origin of Eddy Massaad was destroyed by the tragedy of the Beirut establishment in August 2020, resilience and community reconstruction saw the steakhouse open 30 days later.
“We are used to different challenges, especially when we get out of Lebanon,” explains Massaad. “We are used to being pragmatic and solving problems, going through any crisis and going out positively.”
Swiss butter started its expansion at the end of 2021, opening 10 restaurants in one year, including its first location in London. Now reviewing a healthy eight characters, the CEO and founder Massaad targets 100 locations in the five years following its viral restoration brand and its Steak Frites Sauce catering experience.
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Massaad had turned to industry by necessity. Having needed to pay tuition fees to study biochemistry, he began to find out about the management of restaurants, became a store director, then started in services as a freelancer.
In 2010, he launched his own hotel management service company. “The first two years have been very difficult to prove me on the market,” he recalls. “I won contracts, but there were always insecurity in the service sector. If I lost a client, I had to reduce my team. ”
Massaad wrote a three -part strategy – to develop in the Gulf region, find a master franchise for one of its customers and build its own brand. The first two failed, the third saw him installing Swiss butter.
“If I failed to do this, and that's what I am supposed to be an expert, then it would be the end of the road and I would lose credibility in the catering sector,” he admits today.
In 2017, Swiss butter launched in Beirut next to where Massaad attended school. “We imagined the customer experience and planned it back and reversed the entire process,” he said about the business plan.
With him, their “secret” sauce – which has 33 ingredients, including herbs, spices and butter paste – created by the brother of the Massaad chief and has become the brand of the restaurant.
“He had his personal challenge to break this sauce over 100 years old. And once he obtained the result, we used it together, adjust it and adjust it, ”explains Massaad.
In 2015, Massaad took the recipe instead of selling their brother and the couple later became partners to hold restaurants.
“I was on a mission to renovate one of the restaurant models in my customers to adapt to the British market,” adds Massaad, “I learned a lot about what is necessary in the context of the concept of DNA to make it a big city like London or New York.
