Yunib Siddiqui, CEO of ‘Jones the Grocer’ on his retail chain’s expansion

Yunib Siddiqui, CEO of ‘Jones the Grocer’ on his retail chain’s expansion

The first Jones the Grocer store opened in Abu Dhabi in 2009 and the second on Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai in 2010 and since then it has been a unique journey of learning and growth. Those two stores set a benchmark for casual dining in the UAE and the region. Today in 2022, we have 23 stores with system revenues exceeding $32m and several more opening throughout this and next year. Our uniqueness comes from two folds. We cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner from scratch. Nothing is bought in. Every recipe has batch recipes – in other words, if a dish uses vegetable stock, we boil the vegetables with herbs and garlic to make the stock rather than buy it in readymade. It’s all about achieving the best flavour which surpasses anyone else in our space. We bake our bread from scratch, no pre-mixes. Just butter, flour, eggs, and yeast. We make our own pastry too, all of it every day. We roast our coffee locally to our recipe and pour a fantastic cup. On the retail end, our stores typically carry 200-900 globally and locally sourced gourmet small-batch artisan groceries of which half are exclusive to us and around