Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Casablanca- A brand new McDonald’s is opening soon right next to where you live? Does that even surprise you anymore? Well, then how about a Moroccan fast food restaurant serving all the exotic, exclusively Moroccan dishes opening there where it is less expected?
“Fine Lala” (Where is madam/grandma?) a Moroccan traditional fast-food restaurant, has recently opened its doors in Street Louis Le Grand, next to the Opéra de Paris, France,according to French daily Le Monde.
This fresh concept claims to fuse modern standards of modernity in fast food restaurants with the exoticism and distinctiveness of the Moroccan, traditional cuisine.
Fine Lala’s mission, as stated in the official website, is “to provide clients with good-quality, fast-made Moroccan dishes, to be consumed in a very friendly and comfortable setting.”
“Fine Lala is an invitation to a journey in quest for every beautiful thing in Morocco.”
Mehdi Draoui et Youssef Ben Saad are the two young Moroccan men behind the concept. They met in Rabat in 1999, and according to Youssef, becoming the best friends ever was the last thing they had ever expected.
The idea to open a restaurant serving Morocco’s tastiest, most typical dishes came when they realized that Moroccan cuisine was nowhere to be found where they reside in France. Once, Youssef and Mehdi decided to “eat Moroccan” and started looking up the closest restaurant serving Moroccan food. At their dismay, they got very few. Moroccan food was almost a myth where they lived.
Frustrated by the lack of representation of Morocco’s rich and diverse cuisine, the two best friends decided to create an adequate representation of Morocco’s “most beautiful things” by opening Fine Lala.
The choice Fine Lala as a brand name was anything but arbitrary. It was emotionally inspired, Mehdi shares on the restaurant’s official website:
“We were looking for a name that would encompass all that is beautiful in Morocco. We thought of Milala (grandma), a woman who was there in some of our most beautiful memories, and we thought that she actually symbolizes all that is beautiful in our country and deserves to have our brand name refer to her.”
The two Moroccan founders developed the concept of “the Moroccan alley,” which basically consists of a small area in Fine Lala specifically for fast food, a Moroccan grocery store, but also a shop for small gifts and a pastry varieties—all Moroccan indeed!
In their very start, the two ambitious Moroccans collected 600. 000 Euros from private investors, and in 2012 they earned the second prize in the Unibail Rodamco contest, which meant an addition of 400. 000 Euros to what they had already collected.
In July 2013, the Fine Lala’s founders secured a lease agreement to open their first sales outlet in the center of France’s international capital, Paris. However, Mehdi and Youssef’s journey was anything but a picnic in wonderland. The hardships they faced almost crashed their dream of opening today’s Fine Lala.
French Banks turned down their requests for a loan (500 000 Euros) to complete the project funding. Only after a long, uneasy, boring array of procedures, the two friends ended up convincing the banks to grant them the loan they needed.
Now guess what: Fine Lala is open, everything is going on fantastic, and the same banks that refused to fund the project are now going after the two young entrepreneurs.
© Morocco World News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten or redistributed
