Thinking Out Loud

I’m a huge fan of the MIT motto: “Mens et Manus,” latin for “Mind and Hand.” MIT students across the institution are constantly encouraged to use what they learn in the classroom in “the real world.” Action learning. I adamantly subscribe to the value of internships, externships, labs, company sponsored projects, and the million other opportunities to use the MIT education while you’re still in school. During my January IAP, I did just that.

This past semester I took a class called Global Entrepreneurship Lab (or G-Lab for short). This course explores the intricacies of starting, operating, and growing a business in the developing world. About half-way through the class, thirty-five teams comprised of four MIT Sloan students each, go through a selection process to choose a client company located in Asia, Latin America, Africa, or Europe. My team and I chose a company that was very near and dear to our American, meat-loving, burger-eating hearts – a high-end burger chain in Turkey. For half of a semester we worked with our client, Dukkan Burger, remotely from Cambridge to understand their business, competitive landscape, and potential opportunities. In January, we took these learnings with us as we embarked on a 3.5 week trip to Turkey to help them figure out how they’d achieve their desired next level of growth.

Our client, Dukkan, has an amazing backstory. Emre, the CEO of the company, inherited a cattle farm from his father in 1999. In pursuit of new opportunities to sell his beef at better prices, he began talking to nearly every four/five star hotel in Istanbul where chefs would pay a premium for consistent high quality meat. Emre, a natural businessman, was successful in this venture. As people dined at the hotel restaurants serving Emre’s beef, consumers began to wonder how they too could bring his high quality beef into their own kitchens at home. At this juncture Emre realized there was an opportunity to sell direct to consumers via a retail butcher store. Emre chose to open his first butcher store in Armutlu, one of Turkey’s not-so-nice neighborhoods. Word traveled fast that Emre, the “Butcher of Istanbul” was selling the best beef in Turkey in the worst neighborhood in Istanbul. As Emre puts it, it became a “game” for the upper-crust, culinary enthusiasts to travel into Armutlu to get the best beef in the country. Business boomed. What Emre noticed, however, was that the customers incessantly asked questions about proper beef preparation. Beef was relatively new to the Turkish diet, and people simply didn’t know how best to prepare it. Emre saw this as yet another business opportunity, thus he opened a steakhouse. In his steakhouse, Emre could control the beef from cattle ranch to dinner plate. Emre was dead serious about bringing global best practices for meat preparation to the wealthy upper class in Istanbul. For a location, he again chose Armutlu. Word of the steakhouse spread and the top businessmen in Istanbul, sometimes for the first time, would drive into the worst neighborhood in Istanbul, actually PARK their high end foreign cars, and enjoy the best steak in Turkey. The “dinner as an adventure” concept, the quality of the food, and the buzz about Emre’s pre-eminent knowledge of beef, made the steakhouse a smashing success. The beef was not just high quality by Turkish standards, but was so by international standards. Emre brought dry-aging processes adopted from famous New York restaurants such as Peter Lugar’s and Wolfgang’s. After his steakhouse business stabilized, Emre took a step back and thought about how he could make the most of the non-steak parts of his cattle, the parts not used in New  York Strips or Porterhouses. His decision? To aggressively open 10 burger shops over three years. It was after he accomplished this goal that our G-Lab team came in…

Our time spent working in Istanbul was focused on determining how Dukkan could achieve the next level of growth in its burger business. Their existing burger sales were solid, the market was unsaturated, and the concept was mostly proven. For us Sloan MBA’s, our quantitative and analytical training was instrumental in helping us provide market surveys, financial analysis, and firm valuations. The outcome of this effort was the delivery to Emre and his management team, a list of milestones and best practices they would need to achieve to accomplish their ultimate business goals. Only time will truly tell if positive outcomes will follow, but we left Istanbul highly optimistic.

This is just one of the many remarkable MIT Sloan stories from around the world. Thirty-four other teams who participated in G-Lab also likely made lasting positive marks on their respective clients.