Back 2 Front

A hospitality concept lab · Est. 2026

Great hospitality begins in the back — and wins in the front.

Back 2 Front designs restaurant brands from the kitchen out — engineered for unit economics, dressed for the guest, and structured to scale across borders. Built in MENA. Designed for the world.

See the conceptsThe platform we run them on

The opportunity

A category waiting for an operator-led platform.

MENA is the world’s most concentrated market for premium dining, yet most concept groups license foreign brands rather than create their own IP. Back 2 Front is built to fill that gap: regionally rooted concepts, world-class operations, scalable IP.

$220B

GCC food service market by 2028

Industry estimates

8.5%

GCC restaurant CAGR 2024–28

Outpacing the global average

70%+

of premium UAE/KSA F&B is imported IP

The gap for home-grown brands

4

concepts ready for flagship launch

Aurora · Pasta Lab · Pollería · Pizza

The model

How we build a brand.

A repeatable three-stage operating system — chef-led, financially grounded, and IP-protected.

  1. 01 / Back

    Engineered kitchen.

    Menu architecture, food cost discipline, supply chain design, and a kitchen blueprint sized to deliver target margins from day one.

  2. 02 / Middle

    Designed experience.

    Brand identity, interior design and service choreography developed in lockstep — so every concept reads like a story, not a stack of trends.

  3. 03 / Front

    Scalable IP.

    Each concept is built as a transferable asset: SOPs, training and brand standards packaged for franchise, licensing or owned rollout.

Outcome: brand assets a founder can multiply, license or franchise — not single-restaurant exits.

Concept portfolio

Four concepts. One platform.

Diversified by cuisine, format and price point — covering daypart, occasion and footprint. Each one is operationally distinct, brand-protected and ready for flagship launch.

01 / Flagship

Aurora

Mediterranean seafood, tapas & wine bar

A theatrical dining destination built around an open seafood bar, wood-fired oven and charcoal grill. Shared plates, crudo, flatbreads and grilled-by-the-gram seafood, anchored by an extensive wine and craft-beer programme.

  • Open kitchen with seafood ice display and charcoal grill
  • Sharing-plates format drives high check averages
  • Wine-by-the-glass programme: 30%+ beverage mix
  • Designed to anchor a destination retail location
Format
Premium full-service
Daypart
Lunch · Dinner · Late
Footprint
500 m² · 100 covers
02 / Second flagship

Pasta Lab

Modern Italian, fresh-pasta-forward

Hand-rolled pasta as theatre. A glass-fronted pasta laboratory where guests watch dough become tonnarelli, ravioli and pappardelle, paired with a tight, premium menu of antipasti, mains and curated Italian wines.

  • In-view pasta lab — guest-facing craft as brand signature
  • Tight menu, fast tickets, strong food-cost discipline
  • All-day daypart from lunch to late night
  • Flexes from 250–450 m² flagship to QSR satellite
Format
Casual full-service
Daypart
All day
Footprint
250–450 m² · scalable
03 / Volume format

Pollería y Parrilla

Spanish charcoal chicken & grill

An Iberian grill room with the warmth of a Latin neighbourhood asador. Charcoal-roasted chicken, prime cuts, anticuchos and small plates — built to flex from a 120 m² fast-casual unit to a 350 m² flagship with bar and live fire.

  • Hero product drives high repeat frequency
  • Fast-casual, full-service or food-hall kiosk
  • Lower capex per m² than premium concepts
  • Strong fit for malls, food halls and stand-alone street
Format
Fast-casual to full-service
Daypart
Lunch · Dinner
Footprint
120–350 m² · multi-format
04 / Social format

Almost Pizza

Not your nonna's pizza

A rebel-slice pizzeria with no margheritas in sight. Wood-fired bases topped with global flavour mash-ups — confit duck, Thai green chicken, lamb and feta, fire-spiced butter prawn — with natural wines and craft beer.

  • Distinctive menu IP — memorable, hard to copy
  • Pizza format carries the strongest food-cost discipline
  • 80–200 m² urban, food-hall or stand-alone
  • Built for social-led marketing and repeat frequency
Format
Fast-casual / casual
Daypart
Lunch · Dinner · Late
Footprint
80–200 m² · multi-format

Stage 01, as software

The system we run our own restaurants on.

Recipe costing, stock, bookkeeping and rotas — the engineered kitchen from the model, built as a platform and licensed to other operators. Every competitor claims operator credibility. Back 2 Front has restaurants you can walk into.

The first live site running the whole system end to end is Papagno in Riyadh, opening September 2026.

Explore the platformRun the free Health Check

The ladder

  1. Health CheckFree
  2. Back-Office OSSubscription
  3. Feasibility BuilderOne-time
  4. Pre-Opening PackOne-time
  5. Consulting with TunjiDirect

Rollout

MENA-first. Global by design.

Three horizons: prove the flagship, scale the region, license the IP.

  1. Horizon 1 · 2026–2027

    Prove

    Open the Aurora flagship in the UAE. Validate unit economics. Lock SOPs and brand standards.

  2. Horizon 2 · 2027–2029

    Scale

    Multi-unit in the GCC. Open the Pasta Lab and Pollería flagships. Build the joint-venture pipeline with regional partners.

  3. Horizon 3 · 2029+

    License

    Master franchise outside MENA. Selected own-operated flagships in EU and Asia gateway cities.

Founder

Twenty-five years of openings.

Marco Pierre White in London, then Dubai five-star hotels, then Chef Director of Mamo Michelangelo’s expansion — Riyadh, Jeddah, Doha, Kraków, Antibes and MamoLiti. Twenty years as a chef and operator.

The recordBook a session

Investors and partners

The seed round funds Horizon 1 in full. The deck, the Aurora unit model and the group projection are shared directly, not published here.

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