FSR magazine April 2018

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to guide his work at Hakkasan Group.
Before joining the group in 2017, he
served at the COO for restaurant group
d.ream and senior vice president of food
and beverage for in hospitality company
Jumeirah Group. He also spent
15 years with Rosewood Hotels and 12
years with Hilton International in various
positions with an integral role in
food and beverage development.
At the Hakkasan Group, Kopera
oversees a team of VPs that is both horizontally
and vertically structured. For
example, he oversees the VP of Operations
U.K., who handles all restaurants
across all brands in Europe, but he also
works with the brand directors for the
various restaurant concepts including
Hakkasan, Ling Ling—Cantonese
restaurants in Greece, Morocco, and
Norway—and Searsucker—American
restaurants in Texas, California and
Nevada .
To develop menus for a restaurant
group of such scale, Kopera works
closely with a culinary development
team that includes Michelin-starred
chefs Tong Chee Hwee and Ho Chee
Boon, as well as the brand’s chefs at
each outpost to drive new dish ideas.
“We are aiming to build a culinary
team for our development in Asia, but
for now we have our team in London,”
says Kopera, who travels regularly to
the various Hakkasan locations in the
U.S. and abroad to check in and assist
with menu development.
Naturally, because neither Kopera
nor the head chefs can be everywhere
at once, they rely on feedback from
customers as well as special advisory
boards, which are made up of seasoned
culinary and hospitality professionals
on Kopera’s contact list.
“If the soup is too peppery or the skin
of the dim sum is too thick or needs
color, these are things we will report
back to the culinary team, and they
will work on their dishes,” Kopera says.
When putting together new dishes
or special menus, Hakkasan Group will
first have its advisory board members
come into the restaurant to test out
dishes before they are tweaked and put
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