BEIJING, July 1 -- Food and hospitality are second nature to Bostonian Scott Minoie who started out nine years ago with a stainless steel table and a meat slicer. He put healthy food and catering on the map with Element Fresh, writes Sam Riley.

    Arriving in Shanghai in 1999 with just a backpack, an e-mail address of a friend and US$500 in his pocket, Scott Minoie could never have imagined he would run a successful chain of restaurants employing more than 600 staff.

    The affable American is the managing director and public face of the health-conscious restaurant chain Element Fresh. But sitting in his swish restaurant at the Shanghai Center, Minoie says his success was built on humble beginnings.

    "Back then all you could get if you wanted a catered lunch was a boxed lunch containing a croissant with a slice of ham and a piece of fruit from one of the five-star hotels, and it would cost 150 yuan (US$22)," he says.

    "With a stainless steel table and a meat-slicer, we started a small catering business. It was a real backyard operation," he says, referring to a former business partner from early days.

    While the operation was small, the customers were household names, with IBM and Microsoft quickly giving the pair business.

    "We had nothing really, there were no suppliers. For the first job, for about 100 people, I just went to Carrefour and bought all the ingredients myself," he recalls.

    But food and hospitality are second nature for the 35-year-old Bostonian, who has worked in restaurants since the age of 16.

    "At the age of eight I remember pushing a chair up to the kitchen counter and making my own barbecue sauce. My mom still has the hand-written recipe - of course it tasted awful," he says.

    Back in the States, Minoie worked in sandwich bars during high school holidays and has worked in almost every conceivable area of the food business, from hotels to the wholesale side.    

    He also worked in the management of a major restaurant chain, which taught him about the business side of the hospitality, from maintaining hygiene to controlling food and staff costing.

    Minoie's first foray into Shanhai's restaurant/cafe business came in 2000 when he opened a small business in the now-defunct Gold's gym on Tongren Road.

    It was ahead of its time, before physical fitness had a big Chinese following. Minoie says the cafe had a small but loyal following.

    Operating on a shoestring, just paying the bills was an issue.

    "It got to the stage where we turned the phone off at home and they threatened to turn off the water," he says.

    In the spring of 2002, Minoie bravely decided to close the cafe in Gold's gym, a decision that paved the way for his first Element Fresh outlet, but at the time it was a huge gamble.

    "It was a very serious decision to close our only source of income and our only contact with our customers without a concrete plan," he says.

    Minoie received backing for his new venture from four businessmen and the high-profile location in the Shanghai Center was secured.

    The first Element Fresh outlet opened in July 2002 and its marketing was rudimentary.

    "Our marketing plan was limited to a handwritten note stuck on the door, which said we are open tomorrow. We sent out a few text messages to our friends and old customers," he says. "When we opened the next day, my business partner came running up and says, 'We are full and there is a waiting list of people outside.' It was an amazing feeling."

    Over the last six years, Element Fresh has become one of Shanghai's most recognizable cafe and restaurant brands. It now has five restaurants in Shanghai and three under construction in Beijing.

    But Minoie says the growth was helped by a chance meeting that he believes was only possible in Shanghai.    

    "One of the great things Shanghai offers ... is that, unlike other cities where people have more cliquey groups ... you could meet anyone," he says.

    "You had a whole lot of people mixing, you could go to a bar and see an English teacher talking to a senior executive of a multinational company, for example, which you would never see in New York or London," he adds.

    It was just such a meeting at Face bar, where Minoie met his business partner Frank Rasche, a senior executive at Coca-Cola who had worked for the soft drink giant for 18 years. He came onboard.

    The pair has a marketing strategy founded on affordable, healthy food that has captured a niche in the competitive market.

    But looking back nine years on the backpacker who started out teaching English in Shanghai, Minoie says he has developed personally as business has grown.

    "I have grown 2,000 percent as a person but it has been a gradual process of learning as you go," he says. "You are learning about the culture, the language and you are learning to be a leader."

    Comparing then and now, Minoie concludes, " I would never have believed I could have done that."

    (Source: Shanghai Daily)