Kumar Dadlani is one of the best-known businessmen in Lanzarote. Of Indian origin and born in Tenerife, he has been on the island since 1988 after his father arrived to set up an electronics and computer business. Since he was 16 years old, he began to set up different businesses that have led him to his current business weight in Lanzarote. In the Más de Uno Gourmet program of Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero, with Carlos Chavaud, he reviews his career.
- When did you decide to set up your first restaurant?
I started very young with business thoughts and I had to abandon what I would have liked to be, which was an architect, because my family went bankrupt and I had to start working at the age of 16. At 17 I was director of a company and at 23 I set up electronics, jewelry and footwear stores, among others. In just a year and a half I had 14 businesses with only 23 years. One day a German told me that I had to try the hospitality industry because I would earn money quickly and that's where I set up my first restaurant in 1988.
- How was the process of the work?
I influenced that design and it was spectacular, everyone got nervous because I was already spending money on an assembly that at that time was three hundred or four hundred thousand euros, it was crazy, but I knew I had to do things that way. Months later I realized that either I closed or I went bankrupt even if the place was full but I didn't earn because I thought it was putting a lot of employees and that's it, but no.
When I made the decision to close it and set up a shoe store, I thought about it better and said no, that I was going to start working in the restaurant as one more to see why a business that was full was not generating money. That's when you realize the inconveniences and two months after starting I already knew how the business was.
- What difference was there from the last restaurant you set up to the first?
First of all, at that time there was our beloved César Manrique and the island was identified with the ideas he had. I set up the restaurant respecting his ideas a little. The difference that existed then to now was basically in the type of public that existed. In that time we lived from the Scandinavian and German tourists and it was of a medium-high purchasing power. Now there is a little of everything.
If you talk to me about ten years ago, what there was was very bad because Puerto del Carmen was falling to pieces but in the last decade there has been a brutal improvement. If you go to the avenue now, you will see pedestrians with a medium-high purchasing power and that is what we are looking for, less tourism but of a higher quality.
- Do we have quality staff and infrastructure in Lanzarote?
Lanzarote is a complicated point because with the inhabitants of the island is not enough, you have to bring people from outside and that leads to them having to leave their families and others. However, we have adapted thanks to television cooking programs that have made many young people interested in the hospitality career.
What was practically nothing before, now I compare a great head chef with an architect or a lawyer, they have nothing to envy. There is already an air that being a head chef is a prestige. It is what we live from and I am very proud of the restaurants I set up and having worked in them.
- How did the idea of getting into a boutique hotel like Lani's Suite come about?
I have always complained, especially in the last 20 years, that the tourism that was arriving was bad. Where the Lani's Suite is, it was not bought to make a hotel, but to make a shopping center. If I made a shopping center, it would harm the other locals. I decided not to make the shopping center and a decade later I said: "If I complain so much that quality tourism does not come, then I am going to make a super luxury hotel to see what happens".
The risk was very great and many told me that I was crazy. I only needed to fill 20 rooms and at that time about two million tourists arrived, so finding 40 people was not going to be a big problem. I started selling the room at 300 euros and now it is at 1000, in addition to having 60 employees for a hotel of 25 rooms. We have managed to get 80% of our clientele to repeat.
- Lanzarote is an unparalleled place in the world but the tourist is not stupid and you have to give another value to where you sleep...
I complained a lot about Lanzarote and I went around the world with my boat for three years. I was in 80 countries and I told my wife that we could look for a house somewhere else because we had everything rented. I still have 29 restaurants on the island with 500 employees and we decided to look for another house somewhere but the more I saw, the more I knew that my house was in Lanzarote. When I returned from the trip I decided that I was never going to complain again, that this is what there was and I had to adapt to it. That's where the hotel came from, from trying to attract quality.
- How do you see the gastronomy in Lanzarote has evolved in the last 15 years?
It is a huge miracle that being almost a thousand kilometers from the Peninsula we can get all the products we need and then, the mentality of many young people to bet on this sector. There are many people who want to do something good, sacrificing profits.
- What new projects are you thinking about for the future?
I have a project that I am doing with enormous enthusiasm in Costa Teguise. When I started 20 years ago, Costa Teguise was the ugly duckling of the island, today it is not, today it is a privileged place and with residents who are arriving. I am setting up a shopping center there right in front of Las Cucharas beach and I am doing it thinking about the resident and the tourist. I don't want to say much more, but I want people to wait and see it because it is going to be very good.