Boomah Owl Café of Abu Dhabi: In Pursuit of a New Business Concept?

Abstract

Mohamed Al Shehhi’s plan to open a business, Boomah Cafe with resident owls, emerged after his frequent visits to Tokyo, Japan. Since 2014 he had been traveling to Tokyo and observing tourists at several owl cafes in the city. These cafes allowed visitors to eat, relax, and pet owls – which acted as therapy to ‘tired hearts’. However, opening up an owl cafe of his own in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was not a comfortable journey. The cafe’s launch was complicated by the need to obtain a food license from the Food Safety Authority and a trade license from the departments of Economic Development and Tourism and Commerce Marketing. This step alone took seven months and only concluded after several rounds of negotiations and confidence-building with civil officers. Receiving the pet license from the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment, which was the final formal authority hurdle to open an animal-themed restaurant in the UAE, took another three months. In addition, 15 days after the soft launch of the cafe, Al Shehhi and his partners faced grave socio-cultural challenges, as he had already anticipated. The population of Abu Dhabi, the majority of whom are Muslims, believed in the superstition that owls bring bad luck – a potential threat to the business’s popularity. Therefore, on 3 March 2020, Al Shehhi conducted a meeting with his two partners. The meeting was held to develop a marketing strategy to establish Boomah Cafe as a prominent brand name in the animal-themed food and beverages sector of Abu Dhabi specifically, the UAE generally, and as an educational platform for the general masses, thereby changing their negative perception towards owls. Will Boomah thrive in UAE’s food and beverages sector as a pet-friendly cafe brand, thereby making its mark among the domestic and foreign tourists? Will it be able to change the perception of the general public towards owls, and act towards their conservation through an interactive approach?