Crisis pushed Dubai broker from stocks to sandwiches

Nabil Al Rantisi has been making more money selling selling sandwiches than stocks. Sammy Dallal / The National

When Nabil Al Rantisi decided to leave his job as a stockbroker at the Dubai-based Rasmala in the summer of 2011, he had spent two long years just getting by after the Dubai World debt standstill.

“Sentiment was at rock bottom, both for clients, who were losing their money, and the stock brokers, who were losing their jobs,” he remembers. “There was nothing happening except a big flow of bad news at the time, and the performances of companies were highly affected by the crisis.” Banks and property companies have the biggest representation on the UAE bourses, two sectors that were affected by the 2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent Dubai World debt crisis.

Mr Al Rantisi, who had started up a Dubai-based catering company on the side, decided this was the time to bring this business to the next level.

“After the second half of 2010 and first half of 2011, many people were thinking of a plan B. I was one of the fortunate ones in which plan B was already running,” he said in an interview.

Mr Al Rantisi took advantage of lower valuations for property in Dubai to enter the market at a cheaper rate. His plan was to expand his catering business by setting up a stand alone shop in the Dubai International Financial Centre.

“In the previous boom there was no availability of retail space,” he said. “Suddenly, during the crisis, prime locations became available at a 40 per cent discount when compared to 2005-2006.

“It was easier to get contracting firms to take on work, because there weren’t any projects coming around. During the crisis, they would pick up anything that was coming on their table, whereas you really had to pay a premium during the boom.”

His shop, 1762 (named for the year in which the British politician John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, is credited with having had the notion of inserting meat between slices of bread), opened in the DIFC in September of 2011. From the start, Mr Al Rantisi was making more money selling sandwiches than stocks.

“When we started, our topline revenue was about Dh20,000 a day, and we were serving about 400 customers a day – most brokerages were not serving 400 customers a day,” he said.

Since then, revenue has increased to about 60 per cent, he said, with more people working in the financial free zone.

“There are more jobs. Employees domiciled in the DIFC have increased substantially because banks and financial institutions went on a hiring spree in the last 18 months,” he said.

And Mr Al Rantisi himself has returned to the stocks business, having been enticed in 2012 to join the Abu Dhabi-based MenaCorp as its managing director for brokerage. The success of 1762 mirrors Dubai’s thriving food and beverage sector and wider retail industry that has attracted a lot of investment in recent months.

Not surprisingly, private-equity venture capitalists and individual investors have approached Mr Rantisi to buy a stake in 1762 or the wider group that includes the catering company known Apetite. “When 1762 opened in the DIFC it created a lot of noise because it’s really more than just a sandwich,” Mr Rantisi said. “But we decided to stay private until our operation has a large size that can move on with a big player.”

The sandwich shop 1762 expanded to Jebel Ali in April 2012, and a shop is in the making at Media City with a planned opening in December.

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