Manu Nair

Cannoli Caffè is a premium Italian bakery and café brand known for its authentic pastries, artisanal coffee, and warm hospitality through its online and cloud performance. From its inception, the brand has focused on delivering an immersive Italian culinary experience while adapting to evolving consumer trends, including health-conscious offerings.

Operational Launch & Scaling

Pioneered UAE’s first premium Sicilian bakery concept from scratch, executing a blue ocean strategy with zero direct competitors for baked cannoli’s & maritozzi.
Generated AED 150K in launch-phase revenue(Q1) through 3 geo-targeted cloud kitchens (Business bay, JLT & Motorcity), leveraging hyper-local delivery partnerships with aggregators and a hybrid model capturing 32% repeated customers.
🔹Optimized Kitchen ops to sustain less than 8% order rejection rate vs 15% industry avg through:
- Prep time reduction from 12 mins to 7 mins via MEP workflows.
- Inventory turnover ratio of 18x vs 10x F&B benchmark via Just-in-Time dough proofing.

🔹Digital dominance and Brand positioning:
- Maintained top rank on aggregators for 8+months through:
- Review score optimization: 4.8 out of 5 via post order SMS campaigns with +35% review rate.
- Listing CTR boost: 22% vs 12% category avg through AI-optimized menu taglines & food photography.

🔹Achieved 15% MOM growth(3.5x) from Q1 - Q4 2024 via:
- Dynamic bundling: 28% basket size increase from various combo promotions.
- Daypart expansion: 19% revenue lift from 3pm-6pm by doing Apericannoli; a beverage and cannoli or maritozzi combo

🔹Financial & Strategic impact:
- Achieved 68% gross margin vs 55% cloud kitchen avg by:
- Outsourcing production to B2B kitchen, lowering prime cost while premium pricing boosted revenue.
- This centralized production enabled rapid scaling to 3 new markets without increasing fixed costs, also helped in minimizing wastage without compromising on the quality.

🔹Strategic Expansion pipeline:
- GCC & India Entry - Franchise model development and cloud kitchen partnerships for Riyadh/Doha and Mumbai/Delhi targeting Q4 2024 and Q2 2026 respectively.
- Launched gluten-free, Keto-friendly & sugar-free sub brand in March 2024 contributing 15% to total revenue by Q4 2024 by doing white labelling and selling as b2b products.

With 20+ stores and 35 years of awesomeness Mister Baker clearly standout as a key player in the UAE market and I was happy to be a part of this dream team.

🔹Deputed by the company as Area manager for the northern emirates region to lead a diverse team towards one goal which is to become the market leader in the current leading segment.

🔹Architected 34% CAGR growth over 2 fiscal years starting April 2021 - March 2023 by transforming northern region through ERP implementation with 100% efficiency, B2B network development by adding 72 new accounts generating AED 1.2M annually (0.9M to CAGR contribution & 0.3M to B2B sales department) and operation redesign that reduced shrinkage to 22% elevating regional revenue from AED 1.5M to 2.7M.

🔹Implement a new ERP system and created training manuals for every position within the region establishing highest level of accuracy and cutting errors by 58% without hindering the daily operations.

🔹Implemented new tracking systems to promote business in actual sales, customer count, profit and loss and sales incentive projections.

🔹Drove 10% YOY organic growth (existing stores only) through, sales incentives and aggregator partnerships.

Tablez food company specializes in unique home grown, international and local cuisines as well as partnering with leading franchising concepts.

• Deputed by the company to handle 3 physical stores, 3 virtual concepts and 1 home grown online platform with a team of 72.

• Relocating key resources, increased productivity and cost control systems helped “Bloomsburys” to achieve 51% growth compared to 2017 & 2018 and they are currently doing an ADS of 15000 AED on weekdays and 25000 to 30000 AED on weekends.

• Introduced systematic targeted home delivery plans & virtual concepts for delivery segment in the year 2019 & 2020 which played a key role in the major market shift during pandemic.

• Implement ATL & BTL tools to enhance brand awareness and ensured a great dining experience by team building alongside directing and guiding the management into developing the brand to a key market player.

Key regular functions:

• AOP’s, B2B plans, Budgeting Cap-ex, Op-ex & COGS control.
• Working in Liaison with the finance department to built feasibility reports for the physical as well a virtual concept.
• Developing internal & external audit mechanism.
• Legal compliance
• Revenue & PnL management
• Business development, concept designing and project implementation.

100 years of history, countless rewards. With an unshakable credo & unwavering commitment to service, Ritz-Carlton is the gold standard of hospitality.
A proud part of the handpicked pre-opening team.
• Part of the task force for the re-opening of Baharin, Ritz-Carlton
• Part of the opening of No.5 Terrace bar, Ritz-Carlton
• Trained on quality, cost & COGS control
• Sales, pricing strategy, product & market analysis.
• Revenue and P&L management.
• Customer relations and a leader in creating WOW stories for the customers.
• Developing internal & external audit mechanism.
• Training, Motivation and Team building.

• Part of a dynamic team.
• Worked as a buddy trainer for the new employees.
• Selected as the chief experience officer and Associate of the month’s multiple times.
• Part of budgeting, cost control, food designing core team.
• Banqueting operation expert, banqueting leader for one of the celebrity big fat weddings.
• Trained on resource planning & procurement control.
• Bringing in out of the box solutions, spotting opportunities and turning ideas into reality.

Pre-opening team supervisor for the 4-star hotel in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala which has 3 restaurants and banqueting facilities.

Got selected to do an operational basis trainee for one of the prestigious group of hotels; Taj.

Was part of a handpicked Industrial trainee group for one of the finest hotel in Delhi, Hyatt Regency.