Restaurant & F&B consultants, Dubai

Everything between an empty shell and a full dining room.

Fourteen years on the floor and in the numbers, across the UAE, Oman, Lebanon and Singapore. We find the site, build the venue, hire the team and open the doors. We fix the ones losing money. And we keep running them after, or grow them into the next one.

Message us on WhatsApp → See the results →

First call is 30 minutes and free.

The room, wide
Restaurant in the evening Restaurant in the evening
Kitchen and service
Kitchen and service Kitchen and service Kitchen and service
475k → 1.2MMonthly revenue grown, AED
32% → 26%Food cost cut and held
45 → 160Covers added without moving site
4Venues opened from scratch
Feasibility studiesSite searchConcept developmentInterior designKitchen planningLicensingMenu engineeringSupplier sourcingRecruitmentStaff trainingSoft openingsCost controlFull management

Brands, venues and institutions we have worked with

CartierCartier CHAUMETCHAUMET LOEWELOEWE VFS GlobalVFS Global Digital DubaiDigital Dubai RTARTA KempinskiKempinski InterContinentalInterContinental The CountdownThe Countdown Pitch BlackPitch Black Heavenly BitsHeavenly Bits

Who we work with

Two problems. Two ways in.

Countdown Sports Lounge: plan, build, open
Indoor bar and floor plan, Countdown Sports Lounge Terrace floor plan, Countdown Sports Lounge Countdown Sports Lounge during fit-out Countdown Sports Lounge during fit-out Countdown Sports Lounge during fit-out Countdown Sports Lounge, open and trading Countdown Sports Lounge, open and trading Countdown Sports Lounge, open and trading
First venue

You have the capital and the idea. You've never done this before.

First-time owners rarely lose money on food. They lose it on a lease signed before anyone modelled the covers, a kitchen that can't produce its own menu, a fit-out six months late, and a payroll built for a forecast that never arrived.

  • Feasibility before you sign a lease, including when the answer is don't
  • A costed model you can put in front of investors or a bank
  • One team running design, contractors, licensing and suppliers
  • Staff hired and trained before day one, not during it
How we open a venue →
Full rooms, and the numbers behind them
Busy restaurant service and cost analysis Busy restaurant service and cost analysis Busy restaurant service and cost analysis Busy restaurant service and cost analysis Busy restaurant service and cost analysis
Turnaround

You're open, you're busy, and the money still isn't there.

Busy and profitable are different businesses. It's usually food cost, a menu selling the wrong dishes, over-staffed shifts, or a kitchen fighting its own layout. The P&L alone won't tell you which.

  • A two-week diagnostic across kitchen, floor, menu and numbers
  • Menu re-engineering: what to cut, reprice and push
  • Food and labour cost brought back to target
  • A 90-day plan with named owners and weekly checkpoints
Book a diagnostic →

Sound familiar?

Tell us which one is yours.

These are the things owners actually say to us. Tap one for the short answer.

Prime cost is above 65%. Food, beverage and labour together are eating the margin. We go line by line and find where. On a venue we ran, that work took food cost from 32% to 26% and held beverage between 12% and 18%.
The quietest margin killer in Dubai. Too many items means dead stock, slow tickets and a team that can't hold consistency. We cut the mix to what sells and what the kitchen can execute at volume.
It's one of three things. No recipe costing, no stock control, or theft. Live inventory with POS-linked recipe costing tells you which within a fortnight. That combination is what took six points out of our own food cost.
That's a missing management layer, not a staffing problem. There's no written standard for anyone to run to. We write the SOPs for service, finance, inventory and purchasing, then train someone into them. Or we run the venue for you until there is.
You modelled the headline commission. After promotions, packaging and the discounts the platform runs on your behalf, the real number is far higher. Delivery needs its own menu and its own pricing. We've opened and run four channels, Deliveroo, Talabat, Careem and Drivo, and know what each actually costs.
If site one only works because you're in it, site two breaks both. We test that first. Can the venue hold its numbers for a month without you on the floor? If not, we fix site one before we look at site two.
The rent-to-revenue ratio was wrong at signing. What's left is a revenue problem, a cost problem, or a renegotiation. Sometimes the answer is more covers on the same lease. We took one site from 45 to 160 seats by building a terrace.
Then don't sign anything yet. We model the site, the concept and the covers first. If it doesn't work, we say so. A fee spent on feasibility is the cheapest money you'll spend on this project.

What we do

Six phases.
Take one, or all of them.

Scroll to explore →
01

Feasibility & Concept

Before money is committed. The phase that decides whether the rest is worth doing.

  • Market & competitor study
  • Site and rent-to-revenue analysis
  • Concept and positioning
  • Financial model & break-even
  • Go / no-go recommendation
02

Design & Build

Delivered with our partner design and fit-out firm, coordinated by us.

  • Space planning & seat count
  • Kitchen flow & equipment schedule
  • Interior design direction
  • Contractor tender & supervision
  • Authority approvals
03

Pre-Opening

The quiet months that decide what opening week looks like.

  • Menu engineering & costing
  • Supplier sourcing & negotiation
  • Licensing & permits
  • Hiring & payroll modelling
  • SOPs and staff training
04

Launch

On the floor with your team, not on a call from somewhere else.

  • Soft opening & menu calibration
  • Marketing & PR direction
  • Delivery platform setup
  • 90 days of floor supervision
05

Operations & Turnaround

For venues already trading that need fixing, not running. Advisory, fixed term.

  • Diagnostic & mystery audits
  • Food & labour cost correction
  • Menu re-engineering
  • Monthly P&L review
  • Expansion planning
06

Post-Opening Management

You own it. We run it. A full management contract for owners who want the returns without the daily operation.

  • Day-to-day venue management
  • Team leadership, rotas & payroll
  • Supplier and stock control
  • P&L ownership to agreed targets
  • Monthly owner reporting pack
  • Standards audits & guest feedback

Results

What changed, and by how much.

Problem, action, number. Amethyste launched in 2026. The work below is what we delivered in the years before that.

The terrace at Dubai Design District, in service
The terrace at Dubai Design District in full service The terrace at Dubai Design District in full service
475k → 1.2M

Monthly revenue, AED, over four years

A 45-seat restaurant with one revenue stream

Dubai Design District · 2021–2026

Problem

The venue depended entirely on d3 walk-in traffic. Forty-five covers indoors, one service, food cost running at 32%, and a team of ten with no written standards to work to.

Action

Built an outdoor terrace to add covers without changing the lease or the kitchen. Opened four delivery channels. Put live inventory tracking and POS-linked recipe costing in place, then renegotiated supplier and maintenance contracts. Wrote SOPs for service, finance, inventory and purchasing, and rebuilt the org chart around actual load.

Result

Revenue grew from around AED 475,000 a month to between 800,000 and 1.2 million depending on season, at an average check of 115.

45 → 160Covers, same rent and kitchen
400/dayPeak service covers
32% → 26%Food cost
12–18%Beverage cost, held
10 → 48Team, 80% of originals retained
Cartier activation cafe, Dubai
Cartier activation cafe, Dubai Cartier activation cafe, Dubai Cartier activation cafe, Dubai Cartier activation cafe, Dubai Cartier activation cafe, Dubai Cartier activation cafe, Dubai Cartier activation cafe, Dubai Cartier activation cafe, Dubai Cartier activation cafe, Dubai Cartier activation cafe, Dubai
AED 558,000

One 19-day activation, 2,000+ guests

Cartier trusted us with the guest experience

Dubai · Catering division built from zero

Problem

A restaurant tied to its own four walls has a hard ceiling. Revenue was capped by seats and footfall, and quiet seasons had nothing to absorb them.

Action

Built a catering and events division from nothing: staffing model, beverage programme, costing, client management. Then pitched it at luxury houses and government entities, where standards are unforgiving and repeat business follows delivery.

Result

A 19-day Cartier activation serving over 2,000 guests, worth AED 558,000. The division settled into eight to ten events a month for CHAUMET, Level Shoes, Digital Dubai, Dubai Municipality and the Crown Prince Court.

8–10Events a month, sustained
2,000+Guests served, single activation
19 daysContinuous luxury-brand service
Coffee station inside the VFS Global visa centre, Wafi
Coffee station inside the VFS Global visa centre, Wafi, Dubai
110,000

Annual footfall, captive, exclusive rights

Three coffee stations inside the world's largest visa centre

VFS Global at Wafi, Dubai · Sole F&B operator

Problem

Growth from the restaurant alone was finite. What the business needed was revenue that didn't depend on people choosing to visit it.

Action

Identified and negotiated an exclusive F&B partnership with VFS Global, then opened three stations inside the Schengen, UK and Japan visa application centres. Sites with guaranteed dwell time and no competition.

Result

Sole F&B operator across three locations serving a captive footfall of over 110,000 a year, with no marketing spend required to reach it.

3 sitesSchengen, UK and Japan centres
ExclusiveSole operator, negotiated from scratch
ZeroMarketing spend to reach footfall
Countdown Sports Lounge, and the menu we built
Countdown Sports Lounge, Kempinski Hotel Muscat Countdown Sports Lounge, Kempinski Hotel Muscat Countdown Sports Lounge, Kempinski Hotel Muscat Dish from the Countdown Sports Lounge menu Dish from the Countdown Sports Lounge menu Dish from the Countdown Sports Lounge menu Dish from the Countdown Sports Lounge menu
+300 seats

Added at one outlet while opening another

Oman's largest sports lounge, opened from an empty space

Kempinski Hotel Muscat, Oman · 2019–2020

Problem

The hotel had unused space and no lounge concept. It needed a venue built, staffed and trading, not a document about one.

Action

Planned the layout with contractors and designers, procured OS&E, wrote the SOPs and built the full costed beverage programme. Recruited and trained the team from zero. Ran a second outlet in parallel and delivered a beachfront deck expansion with the hotel's project and engineering teams.

Result

Countdown opened as the largest sports lounge in Oman. When COVID closed dining rooms, both outlets were rebuilt for takeaway and delivery inside weeks, with residence room service moved into the Countdown kitchen.

2 outletsRun concurrently
LargestSports lounge in Oman
WeeksTo pivot both venues to delivery

Also: Bosporus, Dubai Mall, held above AED 1M a month through the post-COVID reopening with a team of 25 and a rising Google rating. Crowne Plaza Resort Salalah, four outlets held under budget on cost, with 21,000 OMR delivered above target in a single year. Pitch Black, Beirut, opened with full commercial ownership, from equipment procurement to the trained team on day one. Cipriani Harry's Bar, Beirut, opened to brand standard.

About

What Amethyste is.

We've signed the leases, hired the teams and closed the month-end. That's the difference.

Amethyste opens restaurants, fixes the ones losing money, and runs them for owners who don't want to run them. Six phases, from feasibility through to daily management. Take one or take all of them.

Most venues in this city don't fail on food. They fail on a lease signed before anyone modelled the covers, a kitchen that can't produce its own menu, and a payroll built for a forecast that never arrived. Every one of those is a decision made before opening. That's why we'd rather be in the room early, and why we'll tell an owner not to proceed when the numbers say so.

We don't claim to be architects, chefs and lawyers at once. We bring in a partner interior and fit-out firm, chefs matched to your concept rather than carried on a payroll, and licensing specialists who deal with municipality and Civil Defence approvals every week. You sign one agreement, call one number, and hold one team responsible for the opening date.

Nassim El Awar, founder of Amethyste

Founder

Nassim El Awar

Fourteen years in food and beverage across the UAE, Oman, Lebanon and Singapore, covering hotel outlets, restaurants, nightlife and catering. Four venues opened from scratch, including the largest sports lounge in Oman. Full P&L ownership of a Dubai business taken from AED 475,000 a month to 1.2 million, with food cost cut by six points and the team grown from 10 to 48. He founded Amethyste to do the same work for owners who'd rather not learn it the expensive way.

  • MBA Plymouth Marjon University, United Kingdom
  • Diploma Strategic Business Management, SCQF Level 11, Westford University College, Sharjah
  • Hospitality Management Arts, Sciences and Technology University, Beirut

Where are you right now?

Signed a lease, still looking, or open and losing money. Tell us which, and we'll tell you honestly whether we can help.

Message us on WhatsApp → nassim@amethyste.ae

First call is 30 minutes and free.