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ethnic-based cuisine. Inside this constantly expanding list you’ll find
comfort-food familiars such as Thai Express, Extreme Pita, Cultures
and Country Style.
Though MTY’s real-estate landscape has changed in recent years,
a significant chunk of these restaurants still operate inside shopping
mall food courts (the rest are in power centres, office buildings, hospitals,
airports, universities and street-front locations). This explains
Ma’s crown. But, outsiders assume an MTY cookie-cutter at their
peril. Ma takes pride in his company’s diversified mix that has extended
its Asian-cuisine foundation to include Greek, Middle Eastern,
Italian, South Asian, European, burger and frozen-treat concepts.
Ma arrived in Canada from his native Hong Kong in 1968, when
he was just 20 years old. “I came here because I was told there was no
snow,” Ma deadpans. He landed in Vancouver but quickly moved to
Montreal. His first restaurant job was as a dishwasher in a Chinese
restaurant. He left the kitchen on day one in tears. “I said this is not
the job I came a thousand miles for.”
There were other kitchens and a stint with a restaurant supplier.
Then, in 1978, Ma quit his post, took out a bank loan and started to
build a restaurant empire. “I had a gut feeling about it,” he says, with
the soft-spoken assurance folks who know him well, know well.
Le Paradis du Pacifique was in a class by itself when it opened in
1979 in downtown Laval outside of Montreal. There weren’t a lot of
full-service Polynesian restaurants half a century ago. There weren’t
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“Even though we’ve been growing a lot,
we try to never lose sight of where we
come from. And where we come from is
each individual franchise partner we have
in the system, each individual brand,
each individual meal we serve to our customers.
In other industries, they say
not to sweat the small stuff. I think it’s the
opposite. You need to sweat the small
stuff, to pay attention to detail, if you’re
going to make it”
— ERIC LEFEBVRE, CEO, MTY FOOD GROUP
a lot of restaurants period. In any case, this 7,500-sq.-ft. curio with
its Hawaiian music and South-Pacific take on Oriental food surfaced
from a challenging initial six months with aplomb. Ma’s first shop
was a fledgling success.
But he had his sights set on bigger things. Ma was watching the
steady flow of Chinese immigrants into Canada. He was also watching
them struggle as he had, weeping through their own first-day
dishwashing disasters. He wanted to help. Lucky for everyone, the
demand for food-court choices was on the ascent. Enter Tiki-Ming,
a Hawaiian-food novelty that planted the MTY dynasty’s roots in a
landscape still fresh to the franchise concept. The first Tiki-Ming in
the bottom of a Montreal office building is gone now, but its legacy
of high-quality, innovative, franchise-friendly fare lives on in the
massive network of restaurants it spawned.
Ma’s early foray into franchising — in whose development he
eschews any suggestion he played a pioneering role — included a
steep learning curve for all. Tiki-Ming franchisees had to learn what
a franchise system was and oversight had to be rigorous to ensure
adherence. “There was a lot of education for both sides,” Ma says.
The concept took off and MTY swelled its ranks in fast order.
Indeed, MTY Group has grown pretty steadily since the beginning —
and particularly so in the last several years. The company more than
doubled its restaurant count between 2007 and 2010 and today’s
MTY has almost triple the units it did in 2013.
MTY has created some of its chains — such as KimChi — from
scratch, but much of its growth has come from acquisitions. In the
last 15 years, the organization has acquired and integrated more
than 50 brands. Year after year, Ma and his team have looked for new
ideas to augment their base, steadily extending the company’s reach
across concepts and geographies. “Pay as little as possible, make
as much money as possible,” Ma sums up of his company’s
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2018-11-09 3:22 PM
22 FOODSERVICE AND HOSPITALITY DECEMBER 2018 FOODSERVICEANDHOSPITALITY.COM