Substance Over Style: Riccardo Giraudi, CEO, Giraudi Group

By Tamara Pupic | Jun 18, 2018

Giraudi Group

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Once upon a time in Nice, France, an enterprise run by an eleven-year-old pupil -allegedly- put a French candy shop out of business. The latter wasn’t satisfying the sweet teeth of his American friends at school, so he found an importer of American candies in Paris, had them couriered to his newly-opened shop around the corner, and the French had a hard time competing. Three decades later, it is a childhood anecdote of Riccardo Giraudi, now the CEO of Giraudi Group, that he laughs at, sitting across from me at one of the group’s restaurants, Beefbar, located at Al Fattan Currency House in Dubai International Financial Centre. However, jokes aside, this episode marks the first time Giraudi got a chance to flaunt his talent for customer-centric concepts.

At a time when restaurants serve as a marker of social class and aspirations, Beefbar in Dubai also presents a sophisticated ambience, with leather furnishings, soft lighting, and black marble -after all, the former boss of the Benetton and Renault F1 racing teams and the owner of the Billionaire Mansion Flavio Briatore is one of the co-founders. But, as soon as you enter the venue, a full-length wall display of different cuts and types of beef serves as a bold visual statement that its brand promise is distinctly different from others. “It is substance and quality in a sexy environment,” Giraudi says, accentuating the word “substance” as he speaks the sentence. “It’s about glamorizing beef to the maximum that I can. I want to give a simple, best quality product. When I started in 2000, I found a gap in the meat market, because all you had were tacky, fat, American cowboys, or nothing. I wanted to do a beef menu, just like a wine menu, and I didn’t want it to look and sound like a cowboy out of Nevadaso I started building it. The big shift came from the menu engineering. It used to be about steaks, steaks, and steaks, but everyone has them, and it’s very hard to differentiate yourself. I hate to be called a steakhouse. We are a Beefbar, and that is different.”

Giraudi Group was founded by Giraudi’s father, Erminio Giraudi, in the 1970s in Monaco, focusing mainly on the import of Dutch and French veal to Italy. Over the years, it has grown into one of the European leaders in trading any kind of chilled and frozen meats from all around the world. The Giraudi junior’s interests, however, were more on the consumption part of the spectrum, having studied marketing at the European Business School, London. While still there, he worked for the world-renowned brand development and creative communications agency, Bacchus PR, which was where he harnessed knowledge about the food and beverages sector. But it was only after spending nearly a few frustrating years in the family business that he managed to expand upon his father’s business vision, which seemed extraordinarily narrow and insular to him at the time, and started building something more fulfilling.

The Beefbar concept has been exported to Mexico, Cannes, Mykonos, Dubai, Budapest and Hong Kong, where it was awarded a Michelin star. Source: Giraudi Group

“It was a completely different company than what it is today. My father used to be a trader and a broker of high volume commodity beef, veal, and other meats. So, I started in 2000 trading fresh meats, to big industry players. It was completely opposite of what I liked to do. I hated the job. I did it for three to four years, it was the worst moment of my life,” Giraudi says, with a real feeling. Thus, an additional vertical for Giraudi Group was born. “I’m the son of my father, but the opposite of him, mentally,” he continues. “My approach to business is completely different. My father is a businessman, and I’m a creator. It was very difficult for me to find a position in his business. I had a choice to either quit, or fight or try to find my own way, which is what I did. I decided to stay in the business, to give it a shot, and he let me do what I wanted. My first major decision which changed everything was that I decided not to be an agent of an importer, but to become an importer myself. Then, he said we would lose the biggest importers in Europe, in that case. So, I found a deal to focus on bringing in only luxury meats, because in Europe, there were no luxury meats. Subconsciously, it was a way for me to create value by importing high quality meats, and to start working on what I had studied. We are now the first importing company of high quality beef in Europe, as we have managed to take on all of the best producers all over the world.”

Giraudi Group is today considered one of the largest importers of hormone-free US, Australian and Canadian Black Angus beef, and the first importer of certified Japanese Kobe beef into Europe. Recently, the family opened The Beefbar Butcher Shop in Monaco, allowing clients to buy exclusive cuts of the highest quality premium meats. Since 2009, under the group’s umbrella is also Monaco Restaurant Group, a parent company for Giraudi’s eight restaurant concepts. “In parallel, and because I didn’t like my job so much, I wanted to express myself, and I decided to go all the way from importation to consumption,” Giraudi adds. “I had worked in PR in London on all the big restaurants, and at a time when restaurants became lifestyle brands, and when lifestyle brands were competing with fashion brands. So, I had already had the meat importation, and putting two and two together, I decided to make a restaurant based on meats, but make it glamorous and sexy. And I was in Monaco, which is where most people travel to once in their lifetime at least. Monaco makes you dream. So, I put forward a product, a substance, a quality, and added a little bit of experience, uniqueness, and glamour. It was never thought through, but it did become a natural path for me. It was, of course, embraced by my father and my family. I still do the big volume business today, the luxury meats offering was just an addition, and then the restaurants were added as a second addition.”

international expansion

Beefbar in Dubai presents a sophisticated ambience, with leather furnishings, soft lighting, and black marble. Source: Giraudi Group

Following the latest location in Dubai, four new openings -Paris, Rome, Beijing, and Riyadh- are planned till the end of next year. “The Middle Eastern crowd is by far the biggest fan of my brand in Monaco, Cannes, and Mykonos,” Giraudi says. “They kept telling me to come here, and I had been wanting to come for the past eight years. I was here, I think 15 times, refusing the locations, the partners, and so on. I used to receive so many phone calls until Flavio, who is a friend, said that his Billionaire Mansion was doing well, and suggested a location. So, I said let’s take the risk. With any new opening, you need to wait six months, because impressions are one thing, whereas reality is another. For any restaurant that I do, I’m very nervous for the first six months. Actually, the third month is a big milestone, because after that, it either goes down or up. It is because everybody comes for a first time, but not because they love you or think that you are good, but to judge you. A restaurant that is full on the first day doesn’t mean that you are good, but that they come to see what you did.”

As expected, he doesn’t boast about the future, but takes a cautious approach, waiting for each of the locations to prove themselves. And that is an unknown that we end our conversation with. “The more you grow, the more you understand why, but actually you never know really why it works,” Giraudi concludes. “You always know why it doesn’t work afterwards. Once you fail, you instantly try to find yourself a solution, because otherwise you can’t imagine yourself not knowing why. You have to justify it to yourself. But, when it works, you never know why it works.”