Dubai: Grit, grime, grounding. The forces that define a professional kitchen offer a special kind of education. It is fast, physical, and unforgiving. You learn to keep your station in order, to communicate when the room is loud, and to solve a problem before it reaches the customer.
Stephen Flawith started there.
Before becoming the CEO and founder of Yolk Brands, a $50 million umbrella company behind Pickl, Bonbird and Southpour, he was washing pots.
“I went from the pot washer all the way through all of the ranks,” he says.
Flawith trained as a chef in the UK. Not in the relatively organised aisles of a culinary school, but through the chaotic, hard school of restaurants, moving from kitchen, to front of house, to events, and finally to hospitality management. At one point, he was spending around 80 hours a week in kitchens. It taught him accountability.
“From the age of 18, I had always been interested in hospitality, and I guess hospitality is kind of where the misfits of society fell at that time. I was a young skater surfer kid in the UK growing up and that kind of just felt perfect, … I just kind of found my place. I found that outlet for creativity and passion, which also had the structure of discipline behind it. It made me into who I am today. It instilled that sense of … hard work and problem solving. I'm not sure that I would be here today if I didn't have that initial kitchen background, which is very military. You are in charge of your station.
You cannot let down service, because your station's a mess and you're not organised. You have to communicate as well.”
The Dubai-It track
Those lessons are now being applied across a restaurant group that started with a single Dubai-born burger concept. Pickl opened eight years ago in a 2,000-square-foot space in Jumeirah Lakes Towers. Flawith says Yolk Brands now has about 50 restaurants across eight countries, with another 28 in development. By the end of the first quarter of next year, he expects the group to be around the 100-restaurant mark. It is the very definition of the 'Dubai-It' philosophy: taking bold, highly ambitious ideas and executing them with record-breaking speed and uncompromising quality.
“When we’re exporting our brands around the region, and we're coming into Egypt and Saudi Arabia, our training team goes in and teaches the same skill set to our partners in our restaurants in different countries today,” he says. “They teach them the foundations of communication and teamwork and decision-making.”
Flawith was born and raised in the UK, but the UAE was familiar long before he moved here. His family had been in the region since the 1970s, first in Saudi
Arabia and later in the UAE. His father moved to Dubai in 1994, and Flawith spent school holidays coming out to see him before eventually moving to the city himself about 12 years ago, in 2014.
Growing up in Dorset, on England’s south coast, he “never wanted to own restaurants”. However, by the time he arrived in Dubai, he had worked extensively in hospitality.
Flawith joined the Appetite 1762 group, which he describes as a pioneer in the city's hospitality scene at the time. The group was known for its fresh food positioning.
“We were the pioneers and doing things very differently,” he says.
He eventually acquired the business. But after a point, he felt there was nowhere else for him to go within it. His business partner Nabil Al Rantisi, who had also been a partner at 1762, encouraged him to start something of his own.
The concept was straightforward: fresh food at the speed and price point of fast food, with a model that could be replicated.
“We thought, ‘let's do something that we can scale’,” Flawith says. Pickl emerged from that thinking: “How can we get fresh fast food and take that to a mass market?”
Everything around the food had to work at scale too - from concrete floors to the furniture. “Ninety percent of that hard work is in the supply chain,” he adds. “That's what people don't see.”
Yolk Brands now operates supply across eight countries. Flawith says the company forecasts supply needs nine months ahead, while expansion requires planning even further out. “We're forecasting up to two years on the herds now.”
Why Dubai makes perfect business sense
Flawith's relationship with Dubai is both personal and practical. He sees the city as a natural base for a business looking towards both Europe and Asia.
“I mean, it's the hub of this part of the world,” he says. “It sits in that perfect position between Europe and Asia, and the connectivity is fantastic. And then I think, especially when it comes to business, there's nowhere really like it.”
The city's demographics make a difference too.
“When we started Pickl, we wondered, ‘who's our target audience?’ And the answer was, ‘kind of everyone’.”
He describes a customer base that can include lawyers, doctors, consultants, families and schoolchildren.
“Everyone is welcome to our restaurant,” he says. “And I think the city has really built that foundation as well.”
He also credits Dubai’s business environment.
“Here, you are noticed and you are recognised, and you are supported,” he says.
He recalls receiving a call informing him that he had been nominated for a Golden Visa.
“Obviously, the government is recognising the hard work that we're doing in employing 300 people….”
For Flawith, the call mattered.
“The fact that the government will call you and say, ‘Hey, we recognise what you've done.’ Who does that? It’s pretty cool.”
As a businessman, what also matters is the structure in place.
“The framework of government and regulations is proven. It's tight. It's solid. You can operate here. There is a framework. You know where you stand.”
The year everything took flight
Pickl had expanded to two locations by 2019. Then COVID-19 hit.
The company moved quickly into delivery, opening hubs in different parts of Dubai through the delivery aggregators, along with physical outlets.
“At that time, we were able to move into different geographical locations and open up delivery hubs via the delivery aggregators,” Flawith says.
“We took that as an opportunity to move into those areas and build that delivery network.”
The company also hired. Flawith says the team went from around 28 employees at the beginning of that period to more than 100 by the end of the year.
When people began going out again, Pickl already had a presence in places where it had previously only delivered. Brand recognition established through delivery brought in diners to the restaurants once the city opened up post-COVID-19.
The company moved into Umm Suqeim, Madinat Badr in Mirdif and Motor City, and later into Abu Dhabi. Business Bay eventually became Pickl City Walk.
Pickl paved Flawith’s entrepreneurial journey. It was also how he met his fiancée, Dalia.
“We’ve been together about four years now, and are getting married next year. She walked past me when I was building the first Pickl in JLT with a mutual friend of ours, Chris, who has an ad agency she used to work for. We just became friends, and then we naturally came together when the time was right, which was nice, because she was first and foremost a friend. She's Jordanian-Palestinian.”
Bonbird, then Southpour
Next was Bonbird. “We kind of knew fried chicken by that point,” Flawith says. The menu included bone-in chicken and tenders, with different flavour profiles. The brand now operates in the UAE and has expanded into markets including Pakistan, Oman, and Qatar, with further growth planned.
Southpour followed, bringing coffee, a roastery and fresh salad bowls into the group.
“Everything in the group has that fresh fast food philosophy behind it… a reflection of myself. I'm not going to do something frozen, full of hormones and unhealthy… my friends and family are into this food. So when they eat this food, I want it to be a reflection of me.
“I guess you never stop being a chef. So even though I am a CEO today... I'm still heavily involved in the product development. I'm not letting anyone touch that.”
Flawith describes the UAE as a highly health-conscious nation, pointing to the number of people exercising and paying closer attention to what they eat and drink.
The Road to Ithaca
“I think I learned very early on that we all have unlimited potential,” he says. “And the only thing that will hold us back is ourselves.”
If you want to be good at something, practise. “No one has ever gone and started something and then immediately been good at it without practice. They need to ask themselves: Do they have a passion for it? And are they good at it? Because if they're good at it, it's a no-brainer; if they have a passion for it, it's a no-brainer; if it's both together, you're going to be a success. The rest is hard work and decision-making.”
Flawith and Al Rantisi had expected to wait a while before they could afford to open a second Pickl. The first restaurant changed that calculation almost immediately.
“Our first business model, me and Nabil [Al Rantisi] take it out and laugh at it sometimes,” he says. “We were going to do Excel, then we'd have enough money in a year to open site number two. By week six, we were doing 4x and we were looking for site number two immediately.”
“So you've always got to have that adaptability, to be able to deliver and to move the strategy,” he says.
Flawith is now 39 and will turn 40 at the end of the year. There is a wider ambition at play.
For years, restaurant concepts from the West flowed into the region. Flawith is part of the pivot wherein Dubai businesses are taking their concepts out into the world. He sees Pickl and Bonbird as part of that shift.
“I think we're incredibly proud of what we've done. You know, the region has been very good over the years at bringing in concepts from the West in my area. I think what we're most proud of today is that we've created concepts that we're exporting around the world. And we've done that because of the talent we have. And you're seeing other brands … FIX, Saddle, do it as well, and it's great that we kind of stand up with that. We can create. We can export successfully to other territories as well. It's really cool to see.
“To carry that forward consistently into Bahrain, Saudi, Qatar, Egypt, … all these other countries is a reflection on our team.”
The business that began with a single outlet in JLT is now valued at over $50 million, targeting 100 outlets worldwide - showcasing the ultimate Dubai-It mindset of taking unique concepts and scaling them globally.
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Anupa Kurian is a Dubai-based senior editor and writer with nearly 28 years in journalism. She has been a food editor. Anupa writes across gastronomy, culture, health, environment and the people who make a city what it is, drawn to stories that reveal themselves in the details.