“It takes a lot of capital, so the risk is that we run out of money before people get to know about us,” co-founder of Pink Fish and Bocuse d’Or winner Geir Skeie told SalmonBusiness.
This week, the fast food restaurant Pink Fish opened in Bergen, having established two restaurants in Oslo at the beginning of the year.
Five restaurants in Norway
“Fast food with just seafood is very new. We have one street level restaurant in Oslo, which goes down very well. The downstairs one in a mall doesn’t when it’s 30 degrees outside,” said Skeie to SalmonBusiness.
Skeie owns one third of the company. The remainder goes to Ronny Gjøse and the investment company Gse Sandvik.
Their first restaurant was opened in Oslo last November. Soon later they will have of five restaurants, as two more are being planned in the Norwegian capital.
The story continues under the photo.
First stop: Asia
Their plans do not stop in Norway. Now they want to take over the world with fish-based fast food. “No one in the world has done anything like it and now we are planning to open several thousand restaurants around the world,” Skeie continued.
They already have plans in place by 2019 to open restaurants in Asia.
“Salmon is very big in Asia, and that’s where people are. Norway is just a small suburb compared to China when it comes to population,” he said.
Big risk
He is, of course, aware that the venture involves a big risk.
“It takes a lot of capital, so the risk is that we run out of money before people get to know about us. But today we have good control. But we do not know if this 100 percent accurate, but all the surveys say that people want this. People want more salmon, it’s going to go fast and people want food on the go”.
Nevertheless, it was natural for the company to start in Norway.
“We are from Norway, and the salmon is Norwegian, so it’s easy to test things here before we take it out in the rest of the world,” he says.
Pink Fish’ salmon is supplied by Lerøy.
