This article is a crosspost with Nuwait.

Kuwaiti entrepreneur Basil AlSalem discovered his passion for food and design when he was living abroad, and combined them to launch a series of projects and restaurants in his country.  

After settling back in Kuwait, he noticed a lack of local restaurants in the market as most of the malls work with franchises. This motivated him to open up his own restaurant, Slider Station in 2003. Gradually, his first humble restaurant turned into a series of high-end modern restaurants, including B+F and Cocoa Room.

In this video interview, AlSalem talks about the major challenges he faced as an entrepreneur: Lack of labor, land, electricity and water at good prices were a few factors that discouraged entrepreneurs from venturing into the industries’ field.

“When I first launched I used to open the restaurant at 3 pm,” AlSalem says. “I couldn’t open at lunchtime because of the lack of labor.” He also had a small space of 60 square meters in an undesirable location.

During our meeting, he advised entrepreneurs to take risks, believe in their projects, and find their passion in order to succeed.

Today, after 12 years of challenges, the entrepreneurship ecosystem is witnessing more success stories coming from Kuwait and more local businesses that are able to compete with big and foreign projects, he tells us.

AlSalem concludes by talking about the Food and Beverage industry in the country and how the market is saturated. Howver, “it could be profitable if the idea had a very unique concept".