Seif El Sobky, CEO and co-owner of the London restaurant Koshari Street:Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Seif El Sobky (LinkedIn), CEO and co-owner of Koshari Street.

My name is Seif El Sobky and I am the CEO and co-owner of Koshari Street, a healthy Egyptian street food restaurant in London. Our vision at Koshari Street is very simple – we want to take one of Egypt’s most popular and beloved dishes and bring it to the world’s mainstream. There is absolutely no reason why we can’t bring it to the minds of customers in the same way as burgers or pizzas.

We’ve taken an original concept and expanded it while remaining authentically Egyptian. Our menu consists of several Koshari bowls building off of classic Koshari – our best seller. Egypt has so many other beautiful delicacies that I believe can work really well with Koshari, so I started integrating things like my dad’s Golden Halla recipe to create a bowl with slow cooked braised beef, or our Levantine Koshari, which adds molokhia. Most of our bowls are vegan and we also have gluten-free options that use a quinoa base instead of pasta.

Koshari is an ancient meal that can fit every palette. Middle Easterners and Egyptians make up 10-30% of our customer base, but the majority of customers have never tried Koshari before. A lot of Egyptians give us comments like “You’re changing Koshari… You can’t have meat with rice, or chicken with Koshari.” For me, it’s kind of like the pineapple on pizza discussion — it’s a personal philosophy. Food has only one rule: It has to taste good.

My mornings are full of energy to help me take on whatever chaos the day will bring. I try to wake up as early as I can, around two hours before I even start to think about work. I read Enterprise first thing for about 10 minutes before emptying my thoughts through journaling and meditation. Then I plan out the top 10 things I want to get done that day. After that I’ll do an hour of sport and take a cold shower.

My day-to-day work routine varies as I’m doing a bit of everything. Mondays are inspiration days, Tuesdays to Thursdays are for the grind, and Fridays are for tick-box activities. Over the weekend, I try to split my time 80:20 between personal life and work.

I’ll often spend time at the shop taking on a shift, talking to customers to try to see what they’re seeing. If I see a customer looking at the menu for too long, I’ll think, ‘Is the menu not clear enough? Is the concept not simple enough to understand?’ I also ask my team how they are doing and what the pain points are within their workday. I try to observe everything without going into micromanagement. And maybe I’ll get behind the counter and invent a new bowl for myself — sometimes it’s great, sometimes not so much.

I’m currently spending a lot of time looking at properties for new branches. We want to expand within central London with four to five more restaurants next year, whether through franchising or doing it ourselves. The Koshari Street model can be copied and pasted elsewhere — it’s not a high-maintenance service restaurant.

I have a fundamentalist approach when it comes to growing the business. Growth has to come from setting up the unit economics. For every single bowl that I’m selling I know the percentage of the cost that goes on labor, raw materials, energy, utilities and so on. It all has to add up to a bowl that has a price point customers are willing to pay.

Good relationships with suppliers are essential. Outside of the shop I meet with suppliers, even if there’s no specific reason, to build the relationship. Inflation is causing price spikes everywhere and suppliers need to pass the costs down to someone, so strong relationships with suppliers can lead to solutions when you are in a rut.

The most interesting trend I’m seeing in the food industry right now is the polarization in street food. It seems to be either loaded fries, fried chicken, and tacos with a ton of fat on one end of the spectrum, or super healthy, super bland salads that in my opinion taste like water on the other. I’m in no way slamming unhealthy food — I think there’s a place for it, just not every day. Koshari Street finds the middle ground: You get the taste that you want from street food but you also get the right calories, a balanced diet, and energy that helps you avoid the 2pm post-lunch slump.

When I’m really looking to switch off I turn on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: I must have watched it over 15 times and know every episode by heart, so it’s a real comfort watch when I want to get my mind to rest.

My absolute favorite place to eat in London is Brigadiers, an Indian inspired restaurant, but when in Cairo my allegiance will always be to Abou Tarek. Those guys are the best out there in Egypt. They stay true to what they do, the waiters are nice, there’s a great atmosphere, and it just feels very authentic.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve been given comes from my parents and it's only recently really started to sink in. They always said, ‘There’s no such thing as a problem without a solution.’ Whether with personal or professional problems, it’s always your mission to focus on finding the solution. There’s always an answer, you just have to find the key to solving it.

Someone recently asked me, ‘If you had to choose a project to work on that you knew was going to be a failure, what would it be?’ Initially I didn’t understand the question. But what it was really asking is: ‘What is it that you truly would like to do regardless of whether money is involved?’ I thought about it and I’d do exactly what I am doing now. That’s a philosophy I want to retain.

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