Restaurants|The wing restaurant Hook celebrated its VIP opening in the middle of December on the Spanish Sunshine Coast. The chain’s next target is already in Dubai.
Fuengirola
From Tampere the ambitious wing restaurant Hook aims to expand outside of Finland. In January, the company will open a restaurant on Spain’s Sunshine Coast in Fuengirola. After that, the goal is to expand elsewhere in Spain and later all the way to Dubai.
“We are seriously aiming for Dubai, but the foreign conquest had to start with reason and not emotion. If and when the restaurant in Fuengirola gets started, the next step will be the city of Málaga,” says the co-owner who lived in Dubai Juha Vuorio HS:lle.
One of the owners of the Spanish Hook restaurant is a Dubai company with a five percent stake.
The VIP opening of Fuengirola’s Hook was celebrated on the Sunshine Coast in mid-December with entertainment celebrities and co-owners. The restaurant’s owners include ex-hockey players Jari Kurri and Arto “Mamba” Malinen and a comedian Jukka Laaksonen and editor Mika Saukkonen. In addition to them, former Miss Finland was also celebrating the opening Heidi Willman and a former alpine skier Kalle Palander.
Hook has grown in ten years under Vuorio from a wing restaurant in Tampere to a chain the size of 13 restaurants, two summer terraces and one food truck.
Last year, Suomen Siipiravintolat Oy made a profit of almost 1.9 million euros.
“My wife Helena and I bought Hook Tampere ten years ago and started to develop it,” says Vuorio.
Along with the growth, the company’s owner base has also expanded. Noho Partners Oyj, known for its restaurants and nightclubs, currently owns half of Suomen Siipiravintolei’s share capital. More than half of the restaurants operate on a franchise basis.
“Basketball player Lauri Markkanen (Jyväskylä), former soccer player Jari Litmanen (Lahti) and GM of the Finnish national team, former NHL forward Jere Lehtinen (Espoo) own ten percent of the Hook restaurants in their hometown,” says Vuorio.
The same ten percent slice is owned by Kurri, Malinen, Laaksonen and Saukkonen from the Fuengirola restaurant through their company Wings Boys.
“Establishing a restaurant is the same as in Finland, but rent and personnel costs are cheaper in Spain. The price tag is about half a million,” says Vuorio.
In Spain, the start-up costs are increased by the so-called traspaso, i.e. the sale of business rights from the old owner to the new one.
The owners of the Hook restaurant, which will open in January in Fuengirola, include ex-ice hockey players Arto Malinen (left) and Jari Kurri (right), as well as comedian Jukka Laaksonen and journalist Mika Saukkonen. The four photographed at the Vip opening of the restaurant in December.
Many The problem with Finnish restaurants in Fuengirola is staff with no language skills and marketing aimed only at Finns. With the help of well-known Finnish artists and actors, only the entertainment restaurant Kukko is able to attract a full 120-seat restaurant night after night with only Finnish forces.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ estimate, 25,000–30,000 Finns live on the Sunshine Coast. Most of them are so-called winter tourists. On the other hand, about 5,000 Finns live permanently in Fuengirola.
The 200-seat Hook, located on Fuengirola’s waterfront, works like the Hard Rock Cafe founded in London in 1971, but instead of famous musicians, the memorabilia consists of items from athletes.
The Hook restaurant in Spain is marketed to locals by former basketball players, a Málaga legend Berni Rodríguezin and a former NBA player, world champion and Olympic silver medalist Jose Calderoninwith the help of
The VIP opening was also attended by a five-time winner of the professional basketball league NBA, elected to the Hall of Fame Michael Cooper. Cooper won championships in the 1980s with the Los Angeles Lakers. At that time, the real legends of the sport also played in the team Kareem Abdul-Jabbar mixed Earvin ”Magic” Johnson.