After IPO, Hong Kong’s Dining Concepts CEO shares China growth plans
It was a big debut for local restaurant group Dining Concepts. Not the opening of a new venue, but a listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Priced at 45 cents, the group’s shares leapt 1,700 per cent to a high of HK$8.02 when trading commenced on August 5 this year, before closing the day at HK$4.28. They have since pretty much levelled out at about 60 cents.
Dining Concepts’ chief executive, Sandeep Sekhri, claims he doesn’t monitor how the share price is performing; for him, it’s about reaching his next goal of doubling the size of the business in the next few years.
The group’s key business strategy is partnering with celebrity chefs, from Laurent Tourondel and Gordon Ramsay to “mixultant” Joseph Boroski. It operates 24 restaurants and bars in Hong Kong, including Ramsay’s London House and Bread Street Kitchen & Bar, Mama San, Bombay Dreams, Al Molo and BLT Burger. The group recently teamed up with designer Ashley Sutton to open the fantastical Ophelia, complete with dancers in cheongsams and handmade peacock-feather tiles, and another venue, Iron Fairies.
“We’re not small any more; we’re mid-sized. If we want to expand regionally or even locally we have to go to the capital markets,” says Sekthri, who is dressed in a dark suit and sitting in the private room of one of his newest ventures, Alto, with a bird’s eye view of Causeway Bay from the 31st floor. It’s a sleek restaurant designed by Tom Dixon, meant to showcase the designer’s range of furniture, lights and tableware.
“I didn’t know we had to have a water pollution licence,” he says, explaining that it’s a requirement for stock exchange disclosure purposes rather than licence renewal. “If you are ignorant of something, the fault lies with you.”