We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ambassador Waleed & Dr. Quiana Shamsid-Deen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ambassador Waleed & Dr. Quiana, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Over the last 30 years our family has been in the fish business through Supreme Fish Delight, founded by my husband’s father Lawrence Shamsid-Deen. Through culture and religious reasons, people typically eat fish on Fridays. As we were looking in to starting a second-generation concept and continue to build on the legacy of my father, We considers garnering a larger market share. Additionally, with the health craze that has emerged within the last few years, we wanted a menu that had diversity in options other than fish, and also consider the taste of various customers. In 2015, we did market research and realized that burgers were are the top of the food chain. We also remembered that the original Supreme Fish Delight was first a Supreme Burger. This was a great way to pay homage to the legacy of our father by returning to the beginning. We developed multiple burgers including: Greek Lamb Burger, Jamaican Jerk Burger, Shrimp Burger, Beyond Burger and a Black Bean Burger. Today, we have created a product for every taste and pilot and brought it to Decatur Ga in an area that does not have many hand-made, fresh to order options. We created a movement, Eat Supreme, LIve Supreme, Think Supreme, where it is more than selling a product, but it is about promoting an experience. This experience led us to partnering with Super Bowl LVIII as the exclusive burger for the NFL Tailgating Party, and partnerships with Fooda and companies like Amazon, where we bring the Supreme Experience to the masses. We are now franchising our concepts to grow the brand, but also to create wealth creating opportunities for our community through entrepreneurship.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Ambassador Waleed and Dr. Quiana Shamsid-Deen have always been serial entrepreneurs. Their commitment is not only about making money but making a difference in the communities that they serve. They coin themselves as social entrepreneurs, They look to invest in markets where they can create jobs, great value, and make a difference. As second generation business owners, they realize that service is where true entrepreneurship begins. Despite the challenges of Covid, they’ve had multiple pivots that have allowed them to grow during times where most of our industry collegeaus are going out of business especially those in the restaurant and retail space. In the last two years, they have opened several new locations, license to food trucks, expanded in another country (Playa del Carmen, Mexico), and increase their real estate restaurant and hotel holdings. They are passionate about legacy and have included their children and their travels by encouraging them to participate at closings. The discipline to not only survive but to grow and expand in these challenging times have been paramount. With the rising cost of labor, increased food costs, supply chain challenges, and fuel cost it truly takes critical thought and strategy to maintain and grow a business. What we’re most proud of is the fact that we consider ourselves a family business and that our customers, vendors and employees are an extension of our family despite growing from a mom and pop to a corporate enterprise. We maintain core family values, a great work environment and are committed to striving for excellence at a minimum.
It is through hard work, sacrifice, commitment, passion, and discipline that we were able to maintain. We thank our community for their continued support and look forward to inspiring the next generation of business owners, social entrepreneurs, and thought leaders in our community.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Over the last two years we had several pivots to sustain and grow our business. Most recently, with increased food costs, increased labor costs, and increase fuel costs, we’ve had to look at other ways to generate revenue outside of the restaurant. We’ve learned that it is important to certify your business as a minority-owned, women-owned, veteran-owned and/or Native American, to participate in government contracting and we’ve leveraged our certification to go after contracts with local municipalities and state government. Additionally, we had to look at ways to provide catering that did not use third party vendors like Uber, Grubhub, and DoorDash. As most know, in the restaurant business, these third-party vendors take a significant percentage of the revenue for providing delivery services or catering services. These challenges led us to go after new business through retail establishments like car dealerships and public sector catering like government, schools and other nonprofits. With six months of bids and several tastings we were able to leverage long-term relationships with various corporations throughout Georgia. Additionally, working over the last 2 years to secure over $3 million in contracts with our strategic partners. Despite the challenges, with persistence, commitment, patience and hard work, we’ve been able to pivot several times over the last couple of years to sustain and grow as a company. We now have over 20 employees three government contracts and a lasting relationship with various corporations that is allowing us to meet our financial responsibilities, build reserve capital and prepare for the next few years in business, while keeping in mind that we working to build a business that moves from surviving to thriving. We are not there yet, but with the support of community and partnerships, we can push the needle to being a thriving business for the sake of generations to come.
Can you talk to us about your experience with buying businesses?
Over the years we’ve been approached by several people to buy, sell, merge and acquire business entities. As a franchise we are constantly licensing the brand Supreme Fish Delight and Supreme Burger in the marketplace. Additionally, we have looked at ways to enhance our balance sheet by participating in real estate transactions. However, until recently we had never brought an income producing asset and incorporated in into our existing holdings. My wife and I were visiting Tulum, Mexico on vacation December of 2020 and saw a number of opportunities for us to engage and expand our business. By the end of our vacation we had executed a lease and within three months opened a Supreme Burger in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. While in Playa del Carmen we understood there will be a need for corporate housing. As we were looking for a residence, we came across a boutique hotel that we felt would be a good addition to our real estate holdings. After negotiations and strategic partnerships, we acquired our first income producing asset: a five-unit boutique hotel that we converted it into long-term Airbnb. Now we can say we’re proud owners of not only a restaurant in another country but also a boutique hotel in another country. At some point, within the near future, we anticipate developing and creating additional wealth accumulating opportunities for future generations.
The acquisition process was intense, all the paperwork was in Spanish, the exchange rate from U.S. dollars to pesos was also a challenge, and it required several professionals including accountants, attorneys, real estate brokers and local partners. Despite the challenge we knew that if others could do it (grow multinational corporations in multiple countries) then we could do it as well. We take this approach as we look to expand our business not only in the US but abroad. We remain excited about our holdings in Mexico and are now looking at opportunities to expand both our real estate and restaurant holdings in various countries in Africa such as: Sierra Leone, Senegal Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Gabon and Nigeria. We are global citizens and we aspire to create an enterprise that will open doors for our communities here and abroad to expand our paths of opportunities.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.supremefoodsworldwide.com
- Instagram: @TheSupremeBurger, @wsdeen, @Dr_qmshamsiddeen
- Facebook: SupremeBurgerUS
- Linkedin: Dr. Quiana M. Shamsid-Deen & Ambassador Waleed Shamsid-Deen
- Twitter: @QMSDeen, @wsdeen
- Youtube: #TeamSupreme
Image Credits
Dr. Quiana M. Shamsid-Deen