Rami Chahwan

Summary

Business professional with extensive hands on and diversified experience in restaurant and operations management, consulting, and continuous process improvement. Strategic thinker with the ability to drive down costs and creating centers of excellence. Identifies and communicates key responsibilities and practices to ensure the immediate team of direct reports promotes a successful attitude, confidence in leadership, and teamwork to achieve business results. Challenges and inspires team members to achieve targeted results. Ability to see both the big picture and minute details, allowing efficient management of workflow, reporting, and expenditures.

Experience

PLK Philippines (franchisee of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen) COO & General Manager Manila, Philippines Sept 2018 – Present

Manage a team of 700 including Supply chain, Finance, R&D, IT, HR, Business Development and Construction. Created the team from scratch.

Led the Market Entry of Popeyes in the Philippines and set new record for best Grossing restaurant in a market entry worldwide and highest transaction count (4x higher than home market)

Participated in the introduction of the New Global Image of Popeyes.

Built and oversaw the site acquisition process with the Finance and Business Development team lead to a healthy pipeline of 21 site in our 1st year and 40 so far in the second.

Led the negotiation with our beverage supplier getting 40% reduction on invoice price with $7.5M of marketing funds over 5 years with a possibility of $15M.

Participated and proposed the menu architecture for the Philippines market.

Ultimate and full accountability on PnL achieving positive net income system wide EBT with sites reaching 22% 4-wall EBITDA

Introduced analytics and systematic approaches in many aspects (hiring, franchising, site selection, new menu introduction)

Strategized and implemented CAPEX cost savings amounting over 20% per site

Led the Finance aspect of building the 5-year Business Plan for PLK Philippines.

Paramount Fine Foods Director of Operations - Global Toronto, Canada October 2017 – September 2018

Create and implement the Paramount Academy

Redefine roles and responsibilities of all support functions (Peoples, Marketing, Supply Chain, Development)

Redesign and introduce a new menu offering allowing us to gain 2% on food cost.

Full accountability of NRG and profitability

Lead the entry to New York City Market.

Assess the internal talent pool and owner group pool and take necessary action

RESTAURANT BRANDS INTERNATIONAL (RBI) Tim Hortons (Philippines) 2012 – 2017

Director of Operations – International Dec 2016 – October 2017

Created and implemented the training program including Leadership classes and Development classes.

Defined the KPIs of the Operations team

Improved the project planning process for better and faster NRG

Attracted and recruited talent to build the team for sustainable growth

Supported the ERP implementation process

Lead sensory sessions to develop the local menu offering

Full accountability of NRG and profitability

Head the operations, training, and development of a New Country Entry

Senior Manager - International Business Development (Dubai – Saudi Arabia) May 2016 – Dec 2016

Lead the site selection process and built the pipeline for 2017 development plan

Worked closely with Marketing team to create the appropriate calendar according to our Brand positioning

Held accountability to hit sales growth plan, NRG and profitability.

Worked closely with the project management team on shrinking the timeline for store openings

Planed and managed divisional, regional business units and department processes and practices to ensure that programs are aligned with company business goals and objectives

In charge of $265M in budgeting across 168 locations in Middle East

Manager Business Development – International (Dubai – Saudi Arabia) 2015 – 2016

Appointed a new role as an International business development to help our partner grow and expand in the Middle East.

Successfully opened more than 75 locations in less than 13 months.

Successfully increased EBITDA from -6% to 9% on a $65M USD sales.

Part of the team that reviewed store designs to lower Capex cost by US$100,000

Operations Manager of Business Development (Quebec, Canada) 2014 – 2015

In charge of $450M in budgeting across 595 locations in Quebec.

in EBITDA was increased from 10.82% to 11.49%

Tims University Manager (Quebec, Canada) 2013 – 2014

Promoted to become the first Tim Hortons University Manager

Trained and developed management in the market for increased leadership scope and responsibilities

In charge of all the training, corporate restaurants, and opening team for Quebec and Atlantic.

Turned around the transactions of the corporate restaurant by 2% and the sales by 7%

Corporate Manager (Quebec, Canada) 2012 – 2013

Managed corporate owned restaurants, of 46 employees

Education

Concordia University/McGill University Bachelor’s in mechanical engineering - Candidate

Additional Information

Speak English (fluent), French (fluent), Arabic (fluent)

Canadian Citizen

Filipino Permanent Resident