Riccardo Giraudi: "There’s a huge amount of high-quality meat being consumed on this island"

For Riccardo Giraudi – aka The Beefboy and owner of “more or less 50” restaurants worldwide – it’s all about “following your gut instinct” when it comes to business. Giraudi is not only Europe’s exclusive importer of some of the finest meats in the world but also a dynamic and creative restaurateur, with a portfolio that includes his famous Beefbar chain and a number of heritage brands.

The Beefboy was in Cyprus in June to attend the opening of his brand new Beefbar at the Amara Hotel in Limassol. It was only his second visit to the island. He had decided to check it out for the first time when an opportunity arose during a trip to Athens. “Cyprus was not on the map,” he explains, but he admits that when he saw the Amara, he was sold.

“I saw this hotel, which reflects everything that my brand aspires to in general. It’s international, it’s beautiful, it’s calm and soothing, it’s linear, it’s everything I like!”

Riccardo Giraudi’s decision to open a Beefbar there was helped by the fact that he would be working alongside the likes of Locatelli and Nobu. “I thought that it really deserves its own concept, and so here we are! It looks beautiful and it meets our expectations. I’m very happy and proud of this. It’s a little gem.”

Like any restaurateur, he expects the standards and quality of his new venture to “remain at the level of the brand” and, of course, he is confident that it will be successful. “When you open a restaurant, all you want to do is give love and be happy to serve people. The concept here is one that we have been working on for over 20 years. I don’t cook but I have prepared the recipes with my chefs and I aspire to my own codes of luxury. We try to keep things simple, shareable and glamorous at the same time, and it is constantly evolving. Every time we open a restaurant, we want to make sure that it’s in tune with the times.”

He believes that the new Beefbar will do well, though he cautions that it all depends on the “energy” of the restaurant now that it’s officially open. “Energy is very important,” he says. “When you design a restaurant, you don’t feel energy and, until you finally walk in, you don’t know how it is going to go. I follow my gut instinct a lot, when it comes to expectations,” he adds. “I also need to come physically to islands like Cyprus, to countries like this, to feel it. And then I will come back and think, ‘we can do this, we can do that’. So is there a strategy? A broader strategy for Cyprus? Let’s see!”

The Beefbar at the Amara is the sixth in the Mediterranean area (one each in Athens, Santorini and Mykonos and two in Malta) and, as Giraudi explains, “It’s a Beefbar like any other.” However, there have been some tweaks to the Cyprus concept. “We’ve kept it more fresh, fishy also, and there are more salads, so it’s more inspired by Greece and by the Middle East,” he says. He describes this particular Beefbar as “a bit more feminine,” though he doesn’t explain exactly what that means. He also says that, “Because it’s hot here, it’s very important to adapt the menu to what we think the customer is looking for, especially in a hotel.”

Giraudi already imports his meat to Cyprus so, from a business perspective, it made sense to have a restaurant that serves it, and there’s more. “Actually, our distributor in Cyprus is one of our biggest customers in Europe. Yes, there’s a huge amount of high-quality meat being consumed on this island! That’s a good sign – if they are actually buying and distributing so much high-quality beef, it means that there is a market for a sexy lifestyle restaurant kind of scene.”

Giraudi’s fascination with high-quality and exclusive meats began in the early 2000s, when he quickly became the UK’s leading importer of American Black Angus beef, Australian meat and, later on, the first European importer of certified Japanese Kobe beef. But where did this interest come from in the first place?

“It came from my family business,” he explains. “My father started a meat trading business in the 1960s and, when I joined the company, it was a high-volume, low-margin business. I thought that we should branch out into luxury, which I had studied. At the time, there were no luxury meats in Europe, so I found myself taking planes to America, Australia and Japan and going to talk to all the meat packers. In time, we became a market leader because we were the only company in Europe with their products. Then it snowballed and everyone wanted to sell their beef to us, so I said, ‘OK, let’s have some restaurants so that we can become even more glamorous!’ and things just grew and grew and grew. Today, it’s still a small company but the passion, the aura and the image of importing this quality meat is something we are very, very proud of. So, the simple answer to your question is that it all came from a heritage situation that I reinterpreted myself. I gave my own story to the family business.”

Having so many restaurants to run must surely be a challenge. How does he manage it? “Really, I don’t know!” he says before deciding to give “the intelligent answer” to the question: “I try to get great staff, great partners and great people to work around me. Today I have a great team but it was much harder in the beginning. With a restaurant, to be able to afford a high-cost structure in the office, you need to generate volume. A restaurant that does well makes a little bit of money but a restaurant that doesn’t do well loses a lot of money. So, we need to have a balance.”

He recalls how, when he started in the restaurant business, he had to be an accountant, a creator, a marketer, a cost-controller… “As time goes on, you start hiring other people for those positions and the more you have, the easier it is. But then, at the same time, the more you people you employ, the more problems you have. So, there is no real answer. Again, I’m just following my gut instinct.”

Giraudi has previously said that his aim is “to rethink restaurant concepts, to offer new ways to consume, and to boost the gastronomic world.” Asked to elaborate, he says, “First of all, I try to focus mostly on luxury. But the codes of luxury are changing a lot.”

He explains further, with an example: “If someone had said 20 years ago that Prada would be producing a backpack or Chanel a sneaker, you’d have thought they were crazy, right? Hospitality has evolved in the same way. I strongly believe that chefs are amazing and Michelin Star chefs are especially amazing. What they’re doing is like haute couture – high fashion. I’m more into prêt-à-porter – ready-to-wear. But they’re still the same thing, right? I think more like a consumer than a chef. And because I’m not a chef, I think about what the customer wants and not what a chef might like and there’s a very big difference.”

Asked to describe his overall business strategy in a few words, Giraudi says that it is all about rethinking existing brands that have legacy and a story. “I take them, I repackage them, I rethink them, I redesign them, I redo the menu, I put them on the map of 2024 and I develop them.” He goes on to mention actual projects that demonstrate this philosophy: “I’ve done that with an Italian restaurant called Zeffirino and a French restaurant called African Queen, which is super-famous in the south of France. I also have an Argentinian restaurant called Anahi that I’m going to relaunch. I would love to have a portfolio of brands that have a legacy but are remodelled to suit the times we live in today.”

With “more or less 50 restaurants” – the number comes and goes, he says and admits, “We screw up sometimes but the ones that close are much rarer than the ones we open, thank God!” – it’s difficult for Giraudi to choose a favourite destination. They are all evolving, he explains but he finally points to Milan as the location of his favourite Beefbar and then says that, “The only restaurant I enjoy going to and I don’t feel as if I’m working is Anahi, my Argentinian restaurant in Paris.”

Still only 48, it’s safe to say that Riccardo Giraudi has already achieved at great deal. He believes that his continuing inspiration and drive comes from travelling and enjoying a bit of healthy competition; “I don’t copy; I get inspired,” he states firmly, but the next moment he admits that he’s also very lucky: “I’m no different from anybody else. I’m just very curious, which means that I always want to find out more. So, I travel a lot and I’m a big, big foodie. I eat a lot and I drink a lot; I really enjoy what I do.”

He describes a menu as a “work of art” and likens the restaurant business to a sort of artistic expression: “You create a menu, you cook the dish, put it on a plate, take it to the table and serve it for an audience. For me, it’s a way of expressing myself and it probably comes from a passion that is very difficult to define.”

So, what’s next for The Beefboy? “I would love to do a fast-food concept,” he reveals. “I’ve always dreamt of having a high-volume business, even though people tell me I should stick with the luxury world. I like challenges and I have a few ideas, a lot of contacts and a lot of friends. I would love to work on a fast, casual concept, which I might already have in the back of my mind, but I’m not saying anything because that brings bad luck. But you will probably hear something soon!”

(Photo by Giorgos Charal)

(This article first appeared in the 2024 edition of The Cyprus Journal of Wealth Management, commissioned by Eurobank Cyprus and published by IMH. Click here to view the article. Click here to view the entire magazine online.)