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ＴＯＲＩＫＯ : Lausanne - Switzerland |
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Invigorating the world's best and brightest with Yakiniku,
the dreams of an Egyptian entrepreneur will come true this summer, 2015! |
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 Mr. Michael, who speaks four languages and owns ten companies, will launch a Yakiniku business..
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| Thanks to his father sending him to schools featuring bilingual education since elementary school, Mr. Atef Michael speaks English, French, Italian, and Arabic. His father's foresight led Mr. Michael's global businesses to success. Yakiniku is a promising new business where he can use his past business experiences. There are many sushi restaurants in Switzerland including Lausanne, however, there is no genuine sushi restaurant that can satisfy Mr. Michael. Although this is the first Japanese Yakiniku operation for him, he is not worried because he has succeeded in business fields where he had no experience. |
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Mr. Michael started working for his father at the age of 13, making parts for watches.
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| Mr. Johner at left is an architect with more than 30 years of experience. Mr. Michael is grateful to Mr. Johner for coming up with outstanding ideas - much better than Mr. Michael expected. Applying to local authorities for restaurant permits was a huge headache because there were many difficulties including ventilation and plumbing due to phyiscal limitations of the new building. Mr. Johner alleviated this headache. |
| Mr. ATEF MICHAEL |
Born in 1957, Cairo, Egypt.
Elementary school: French and English
Middle and high school: Italian and English
At the age of 13, he started to assist his father by making watch parts. He also assembled and sold watches. After graduating from university, he worked for the Italian Embassy in Cairo as an interpreter. After that, he managed the watch company together with his father and started new businesses using his language skills.
<Recent business operations>
Cairo: Assembly plant for a leading auto maker, CD manufacturing plant, catering facility, and watch parts manufacturing plant under joint ownership with his father.
Greece: CD/DVD replication plant, printing shop as well as the development and sale of resort villas.
Switzerland: With his elder brother, CD machine line manufacturing company and it's mechanical parts. Optimum Plus as consulting company, finally, TORIKO restaurant.
<Business fields in Mr. Michael's family>
Grandfather: Dentist and owned a leather products business
Father: Owner of watch brand ZIZA and parts manufacturer for Swiss watch makers.
Oldest brother: Owner of a consulting office in watch parts manufacturing in Lausanne.
Second older brother: Owner of a factory of frozen pastry & food in Montreal.
Oldest sister: Branch manager of a French bank in Cairo
Second oldest sister: Runs a café in Toronto after working for Swiss Air Lines.
Mr. Atef Michael (Lausanne)
Younger brother: Owner of a chocolate factory & shop in Cairo. |
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Q1: What made you start a Yakiniku business?
A1: I had Yakiniku for the first time when I visited a family in Nagoya who had hosted my child. It was so delicious and I knew immediately there would be many people in Lausanne eager for Japanese-style Yakiniku. Not offering what people want is against my sense of hospitality.
Q2: What is your sense of hospitality?
A2: I have sharpened my insights to grasp how people spend money and what makes them feel unhappy from helping may father at his job since high school. My enthusiasm to make my customers happy by using my insights is my sense of hospitality.
Q3: Please tell us how to sharpen our insights.
A3: It is to understand matters correctly. My father had a watch brand name ZIZA registered in Switzerland and partially manufactured/ assembled in Cairo. When I was in high school, he had me make these parts. I even helped him with the assembly and sale of the watches. Watches do not work if even small parts are made imprecisely. I learned from using my hands that accumulated accuracy is essential for a watch to function, and the precision of the work has nothing to do with the size of the part. This experince deepened my marketing style and helped me understand how to make customers love my products.
Q4: However, the Yakiniku and watch businesses require different marketing strategies, don't they?
A4:They are the same in terms of winning a customer's heart. Just observe closely the gap between the dishes we offer and the diners' preferences, then make adjustments. My job is a continuation of correction and adjustment. I have expanded my business activities in this way. Since I can speak English, French and Italian, I 'm confident that I can elicit feelings from people and explain my ideas to them in an easy-to-understand manner regardless of race or culture.
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Q5: What is your marketing strategy?
A5: Sushi and Yakiniku will be our featured menu items. I would like people to try Yakiniku when they come to the restaurant to eat sushi. I believe that many people will fall in love with Japanese-style Yakiniku after trying it once. There is a great need for healthy meat dishes. A crucial phase will be six months after the grand opening. I will complete the correction and adjustment of flavors during this period. It is important to accurately understand the gap between the taste of the dishes and customer prefences, then pass these along to the chef in an easy-to-understand manner. I believe my past business experience will surely help me.
Q6: Why did you choose this building?
A6:This building faces a road that connects Geneva and Lausanne. On weekends, there is a lot of traffic heading for leisure activities. Most of our customers are universtiy students and researchers. The University of Lausanne and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne are in the neighborhood. The Institute of Technology is highly ranked in the "Academic Ranking of World Universities." In particular, due to its excellence in the mechanical engineering field, multinational corporations including Rolex and Nestle offer large amounts of funding for R&D. The restaurant is on the ground floor and a dormitory for Institute students is upstairs. I anticipate that these students will savor sushi and enjoy Yakiniku when they are worn out from studying, when they get together with friends, or when they have a party with professors. Japanese food is popular in Lausanne as a safe, healthy dining option. Eating Yakiniku energizes people. This is universal truth - the joy of eating - and transends race and region. I would like to use my business experience to offer the joy of eating. |
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2014 Academic Ranking of
World Universities,ARWU |
| Ranking |
Universities
(Mechanical Engineering) |
| 1 |
ＭＩＴ |
| 2 |
Stanford University |
| 19 |
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne |
| 41 |
Kyoto University |
| 76~100 |
Tohoku University |
| 76~100 |
Tokyo Institute of Technology |
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| he Swiss Federal Institute of Technology`s library was built with donations from Rolex and the disk-shaped school building was designed by a Japanese architect. With generous funding from global companies, outstanding researchers and students from around the world flock to the Institute. |
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