How Gobblers Stood Out in Saudi Arabia’s Competitive Market

Gobblers is a fusion restaurant in the heart of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that specializes in two items: burgers and taouks. Taouk is a traditional grilled chicken dish of Lebanon while burgers are an American staple. Inspired by his love for both cuisines, owner Turki Al Frieh decided to put his own spin on the two classics.

We spoke with Turki who shares his inspiration behind the unique concept and how Sapaad was able to help him expand his operations.

What was your inspiration behind setting up a Lebanese-American restaurant?

The inspiration behind Gobblers is pretty simple. I wanted to create a restaurant that mixed two different cuisines and transported customers to two different worlds simultaneously with every bite.

When people think of Lebanese food, they think of a taouk sandwich; when they think of American food, they immediately visualize burgers. Those two dishes—strong representatives of their respective cuisines—actually complement each other very well. So, by adding an eastern twist to burgers and a western twist to taouk, I fused the two concepts.

How do you stay ahead of the competition?

What helps us stand out is our excellent customer service and our unique fusion of Middle East meets West. I wanted our customers to feel at home the moment they entered our doors. We made sure to keep everything—from our interiors to our menu—comforting. Our menu only has six items so it’s easy to decide on what to eat. Since we have such a limited selection, we can focus on obtaining the highest quality of fresh ingredients.

Aside from that, the two important tools that helped us succeed were a great location and an ever better POS system.

What drew you to Sapaad?

Since we have a prime location in Sulaymaniyah, the heart of Saudi’s capital, we cater to the cravings of all our customers. We serve employees who want lunch delivered to their offices, customers ordering online from the comfort of their own homes, visitors who want to dine-in and meet with us, and customers doing a quick takeaway detour on their way home.

We were on the lookout for a modern and robust POS that could help us serve all these different customers with the same standard of service. We found Sapaad through a quick Google search and immediately signed up for a demo. We found that it had everything that we were looking for but the scalability feature was what got us hooked.

We’re planning on expanding our restaurant and Sapaad makes it possible with just a click of a button! How cool is that? Scaling has never been easier and, with Sapaad, we can spread our unique concept and great food to all burger and taouk lovers across Saudi Arabia.

How has your Sapaad experience been?

Our experience with Sapaad has been wonderful. It has a lot of powerful features and, since it’s a cloud-based application, I can always keep tabs on how we’re doing. It’s incredibly easy to set up combo meals and punch-in orders but my favorite is how it helped us with our inventory. Thanks to Sapaad, we can track our ingredients in real-time to ensure that we never run out of stock. The flexibility and seamlessness it provides us is unbeatable and we’re very excited to use it for all our future branches

What are the crowd-pleasers at your restaurant?

Everything on the menu is great but customers definitely come back for the Mighty Taouk, a traditional Lebanese taouk with the addition of American coleslaw—the perfect mixture of flavours.

Do you have any advice for upcoming restaurant owners?

In order to stay ahead of such a competitive industry, make sure you accomplish three things: have a credible POS with a reliable support team, pick a buzzing location to attract a diverse group of customers, and last but not least, study the market you’re in. For example, Saudi Arabia has a huge market so it’s very important that our prices stay competitive.

The Sapaad team is thrilled to be a part of  Gobblers’ success story. Visit Gobblers in Riyadh or check our their delectable menu items on their Facebook and Instagram profiles.