Vietnam
20 years in the F&B, franchising, food processing, catering and event business, including 17 years as an entrepreneur building up and running my own company in Switzerland, plus 3 years developing a franchise concept of a foreign owned F&B business in Vietnam, for expansion throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Since 2017 involved in the restructuring, rebranding, and expansion of hypermarket & supermarket stores, owned by one of the largest foreign retailers operating in Vietnam. Mainly in charge of assets procurement, as well as designing innovative concepts and solutions to improve the operations while reducing costs. I'm bilingual English & German and speak fluent Vietnamese
In charge of assets & equipment procurement for all hypermarkets projects, including all renovations, rebranding and new store openings. This also includes designing and developing new, modern and innovative assets and solutions, as well as lowering costs while retaining or increasing quality.
From 2017 – 2019 head of delicatessen and processed food, we developed the nowadays existing GO! Delicious concept which is the current delicatessen department in all GO! Hypermarkets in Vietnam (formerly Big C)
Phatty’s Sports Bar & Grill was the first professional sports bar in Vietnam. As an Australian owned venue, partnered with the Al Frescos Group, Phatty’s focuses on streaming international sports events live and providing high quality Western & Vietnamese pub grub with excellent service to ensure top notch customer experience. I was assigned to design the weekly/monthly sports schedule, train staff, create attractive promotions, interact with customers, improve product consistency, handle all social media and prepare weekly/monthly reports to BoD. I also implemented a few changes regarding the existing assets and equipment, such as introducing a new state of the art POS system, as well as adding a multi-channel input/output switchboard hub, allowing to stream any network on any screen at the push of a button. During my time at Phatty’s I increased revenue by more than 10% LFL compared to the same period the year before. I reduced staff costs by 20% and food & beverage costs dropped from 33% to 29-30%.
I was assigned to oversee the development and coaching/training of existing brands (Barbecue Garden, Vietnam). Implemented new training and operation procedures for 180 staff with annual gross sales of over 3.5mio USD. Reduced costs by 1.5-2% while increasing revenue through product and service consistency, marketing, promotions and customer care. I was involved in developing the franchise system for Barbecue Garden and successfully opening franchise outlets in Malaysia and the Philippines. I designed a brand-new pizza concept for franchise expansion and oversaw the market entry and store opening of its first outlet in August 2015, in Yangon, Myanmar. This included 3 month on the ground supervising and support, including overseeing the store fitting out, equipment installation and commissioning, as well as conducting staff training for both FOH & BOH positions.
Founder & driving force in realizing the initial build-up phase and later expansion by developing a franchising system to roll out the concept, as well as optimizing the company structures and production processes to constantly increase profitability, while strengthening sustainability. I also built up a supplier network and supply chain to ensure product quality, stock control, price negotiations and coordinated all food processing and production operations, reaching an annual output in excess of 200 tons processed raw materials. Altogether, spanning over more than a decade, managing the overall operation of a flagship store, with 20+ pax dine-in venue, take out counter and home delivery service, a production center and 2 franchise operated outlets, catering to over 25’000 registered customers.
Project assignment, working at the Department of Organic Chemistry at the University Zurich Irchel, Switzerland. Working on a pharmaceutical research project in collaboration with Johnson & Johnson, mainly tasked with developing an up-scaling procedure, including a lot of column and flash chromatography purification and compound separation.