Bubba Gump Shrimp to open in Egypt, Kuwait ‘as soon as possible’
Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. franchisee Mubarak Al-Hassawi Restaurant Development Group’s launch of the Forrest Gump-based restaurant’s first Europe location in London’s renowned Trocadero Centre last fall came in the midst of an over-six-year delay in launching into the Middle East.
Madame Fazir, who reached the agreement with Landry’s to open Bubba Gump restaurants in the UK and Middle East on behalf of Al-Hassawi, did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the PR agency for Bubba Gump London, posed by Undercurrent News for two weeks, on its new site plans.
A Bubba Gump London spokesperson, Shelley Sofier, told Undercurrent the company plans to open new locations in Egypt and Kuwait “as soon as possible”. It also plans to open up four more UK locations — in addition to its most recent Trocadero location — over the next four years.
“The Mubarak Al-Hassawi Group will be be looking for locations in major cities – they need big units, which can generate a big footfall, and there aren’t that many of those around,” Sofier said.
The group seems to be stepping back into the public eye with its London launch, giving some hope that it will perhaps re-ignite plans it announced in February of 2008, when it inked its deal with Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Restaurants to become the company’s exclusive franchisee in the Middle East.
At the time, the publicly-announced a plan to open its first location in Dubai in the fourth quarter of that year, but according to Bubba Gump Shrimp’s website, no such locations have opened yet. It lists a total of 11 foreign locations in regions as far away from Landry’s Houston headquarters as Tokyo, but none are in the Middle East.
Kuwait location a mystery
Plans for Kuwait stalled after a location was advertised to the public, it seems. An April 2013 post on the Kuwait-based online gossip portal TwoForyEightAM features a photo of a Bubba Gump Shrimp banner at “Symphony Mall” with the words “coming soon” underneath and commentary from one of the website’s users celebrating the supposed coming of the restaurant.
The reasons Al-Hassawi has stalled remains unclear, barring the obvious hurdles of civilian violence and near-civil-war in Egypt. Undercurrent was also unable to reach Landry’s for comment on the plans.
From a business standpoint, the restaurant concept has had strong success making inroads into cultures that are vastly different from the American-rooted Tom Hanks film the restaurant chain perpetually commemorates.
Bubba Gump Shrimp lists 11 foreign locations far away from owner Landry’s headquarters in Houston, Texas, on its website, among them Bali Indonesia; Makati City, Philippines; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and three locations in Japan. It also lists 32 locations in the United States.
Sales dollars brought in by the 1994 movie Forrest Gump show strong international interest, as 51.3% of the movie’s total lifetime gross sales of $677.9 million came from overseas, according to Box Office Mojo.
Location, location, location
Al-Hassawi’s stalled plans could be in part due to its efforts to secure the right location. Its most recent location opening in Trocadero, in the location formerly occupied by Planet Hollywood, is “massively important” to the company, Al-Hassawi said in a question and answer sheet on the opening.
“It’s an iconic location, and with the average footfall levels in this street being so massive, we’re excited at being able to secure this site,” the group said, adding later that the Trocadero has one of the highest footfall areas in the entire United Kingdom.
“Location is so important in London, as it is outside London too, so every Bubba Gump restaurant has to be in a fabulous high priority location – if we open 10 Bubba Gumps here, they will be in ten great locations,” the company said
The company plans to maintain the same large portions at its restaurants regardless of the location. Menu offerings may be a different story. In the 2008 announcement, the company said it planned to offer items to satisfy regional cuisine at its Middle East locations.
Which suppliers will benefit?
While shrimp is the species that Forrest Gump and his friend Bubba muse about during their days of fighting in Vietnam in the movie, the restaurant modeled after their discussions ventures into a much more vast array of seafood offerings, with London-area Galaxy Foods set to handle the sourcing.
Suppliers of salmon from Norway and haddock from the North Sea, both of which are brought in fresh to its London location, stand to gain with the restaurant’s new openings, as do those of popular whitefish. The company brings in frozen mahi mahi fron New Zealand, Ecuador and Chile; and hoki from the Pacific Ocean.
Al-Hassawi sees its shrimp offerings as particularly important to the London launch since it fills a niche for shrimp not offered in the fish and chips-focused seafood restaurant arena, but it sees a general “gap in the market for a strong chain of restaurants specializing in seafood”.
Source: Aswat Masriya
