São Paulo – A businessman from Palestine, brought up in Brazil, is responsible for taking to the West Bank some of the most famous food franchise chains in the United States. Adeeb Musa Al Bakri, aged 60, already owns three radio stations and department stores in Palestine and has real estate in Brazil. Early this year, however, he expanded his business in the West Bank, with the opening of the two first shops of the KFC chain, specialized in chicken dishes. On Monday, Bakri should inaugurate the first unit of Pizza Hut beside one of the KFC shops in Ramallah.
Al Bakri was born in Palestine in 1952 and moved to the city of Lajeado, in Southern Brazil, in 1968. Six months later, he moved to São Leopoldo and, in 1972, he moved to Porto Alegre, the capital of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, in which he had been living since 1968. It was in Rio Grande do Sul that the family prospered with a textile mill. In 1994, however, Bakri moved back to Palestine to take care of his sick father. The idea was to spend three months there, but after his father’s death, he no longer returned to Brazil.
"My father was born into a traditional family in Palestine, and he had companies and tenants. I used his money to set up radio stations, shops and franchises. I learnt much about the business world while living in Porto Alegre, and I often travelled to São Paulo," recalls the businessman. Some five years ago, a friend who lived in Chicago suggested that Bakri try to take large North American fast food chains to Ramallah. He accepted the idea, but had no clue how difficult it would be to put the project into practice. "When I suggested it to the companies, they wouldn’t even hear of it. They thought there were only camels here, that there was not public for that,” he said.
Bakri finally managed to convince KFC executives to open one shop in Ramallah. Today, he has two in the city and plans to end the year with five shops in the Palestinian Territories, hoping to end 2013 with 20 units. The next two shops will be inaugurated in Ramallah. Then he will open shops in cities like Nablus and Jericho. “We currently sell over ten times what I thought. The shops are always crowded and are open until two or three in the morning. We are overworked,” he says.
Although they have the same menu as other of the chain units, Bakri’s shops sell spicier dishes than most shops. “When we opened the first unit, the machine that fried and seasoned chicken with more pepper had much greater demand than the machine that fried it with less pepper. We now have six machines offering the recipe with pepper and two that prepare the normal recipe,” he said.
Almost all the products used in the recipes are bought in Palestine or countries in the region. The Palestinian KFC and Pizza Hut employees are trained in England and France. “I even imported rice from Brazil, but when the Brazilian real appreciated it became too expensive to buy rice from Brazil. Since then, I started buying rice from Egypt and other suppliers,” he said.
While expanding his KFC units and planning the opening of the Pizza Hut shop, Bakri is already preparing entry of the third chain in the country. But he is keeping the name secret. “Our talks are already advanced, but there are some details to finalize,” he said. Apart from the fast food chains, he has two department stores, in which he sells clothes, toys, household appliances and costume jewellery. Bakri also says that he learnt much about the business world while travelling between Porto Alegre and São Paulo, listening to Gaúcha, Guaíba and Globo radio stations. He liked listening to radio so much that he now has three stations in Palestine, broadcasting to Israel and Jordan.
Despite all his business in the Arab world, Bakri left roots in Brazil. He still has real estate in Porto Alegre and relatives in several cities in the state, like Rio Grande, Santa Maria and Caxias do Sul. The last time he visited Brazil was in 2010, and he should return in early 2013. "I like the country and the Brazilians very much. I owe all I am and what I have to Brazil,” says Bakri.
*Translated by Mark Ament
