On a busy night in London, the queue outside Swiss Butter moves with a kind of quiet choreography. Guests already know what they are here for. Phones hover above identical plates, the same steak, chicken, or salmon arranged with fries, salad, and a pool of vivid sauce. Inside, the music is calibrated rather than loud, the lighting is warm rather than dim, and the staff move with the assurance of people who know what happens next.
It is a simple scene, repeated with near-perfect consistency in Beirut, Dubai, Riyadh, Madrid, and beyond. Swiss Butter is, on paper, a minimalist concept: a three-item menu and a signature sauce. In practice, it has become something closer to a global cult brand, recognised as much for how it makes people feel as for what it serves.
Behind it is Eddy Massaad, a founder who never planned to become a restaurateur. He came to hospitality through management, not food. “I come from a management background. My first venture, I MANAGE, used to run operations and back-office support for some of Lebanon’s leading hospitality brands,” he says. “We were always behind the scenes, making sure those concepts worked.”
Years spent as the operator of other people’s ideas left him with a clear conviction: structure, not spectacle, is what keeps a concept alive. “I have always believed in the power of systems,” he explains. “Business often gets noisy, there’s pressure to add more, offer more, communicate more. But I’ve always worked better with limits. I don’t get excited by bloated menus or complex teams; I get excited when every component moves with intention.”
Swiss Butter became the proof point for that philosophy. The brand began under the I MANAGE umbrella, but it was the first concept the team built from scratch, designed from day one to stand on its own feet. “After years in that role, I wanted to build something that was fully ours, a concept we would own, control and scale,” Massaad says. “From day one it wasn’t about launching a restaurant group, it was about proving we could take one great idea and make it work globally, simply and consistently, without shortcuts.”
The “one great idea” started with a sauce. His brother had developed it years earlier and was thinking about selling it. Massaad pushed back. “ I told him not to. I saw something special in it and believed I could build a concept around it,” he says. The sauce became more than a recipe. It became the organising principle of an entire brand.
That focus shows up most clearly in the menu. Swiss Butter serves just three mains, a choice that has helped define its identity. “We didn’t launch to be trendy. Our three-item menu wasn’t a marketing gimmick. It was a deliberate choice: no distractions, no clutter, just quality, consistency and an obsessive focus on making our guests happy,” Massaad says. “From Day One I wasn’t thinking: ‘Let’s open one restaurant.’ I was thinking: ‘Let’s build a model that could be replicated in every major city in the world.’ That mindset is why it works.”
Minimalism in hospitality can be a double-edged sword. Strip away too much and the experience starts to feel cold. Swiss Butter has pushed in the opposite direction, using restraint to sharpen the emotional impact rather than dull it. “That’s the hardest part. Minimalism can easily feel cold if there’s no emotional layer,” Massaad says.
“For us at Swiss Butter it comes down to the small details: the moment you walk in, the plating of your meal, the staff who know when to clear plates and when to step back. Yes, everything is engineered for consistency, but nothing should feel robotic. We want guests to feel genuinely taken care of. When you strip away the excess, you’re left with the essence. That’s what really sticks, and so that’s what we focus on.”
Guests often describe Swiss Butter as a feeling rather than a restaurant, which is no accident. “From day one, we recognised that the show-stopper was the sauce, but the real focus was on the feeling,” he says. “We wanted people to feel happy. We worked on the music, the lighting, the pace of service, the consistency and simplicity of the experience, and the value proposition. The result is two words I hear almost every day: Swiss Butter is comforting and honest. That’s what people come back for.”
Scaling without dilution —
The challenge for any tightly defined concept is what happens when it travels. Many minimalist restaurants lose their edge as they expand, becoming inconsistent or over-complicated in the process. For Massaad, avoiding that fate has meant treating consistency as an organisational principle rather than a checklist. “Consistency is everything. But make no mistake, consistency isn’t about rigid control. It’s about shared values and culture, and effective systems that people can trust,” he says.
“From day one, it was about proving we could take one great idea and make it work globally.”
Eddy Massaad
Swiss Butter does not franchise. The company owns every location, a deliberate decision to keep the experience aligned with the original intent. The sauce tastes the same wherever it is served, the lighting feels familiar, and the pacing of the meal is carefully calibrated so that, in Massaad’s words, “whether you’re in Riyadh, Madrid, Dubai, or London the tenth bite lands the same as the first. That’s not luck. That’s the model.”
That model depends heavily on the people delivering it. “We don’t leave it to chance. At Swiss Butter, every team member is enrolled in our Swiss Butter Academy,” he says. “It’s part education, preparing you to grow in your role and into your next, part alignment on brand standards, and part immersion into our culture. Our people understand the purpose behind their role, that they are very much in control of their future assignments, and that they are empowered to achieve their potential. They naturally go further. That’s the difference between service and experience.”
In a world where social media can make or break a restaurant, Swiss Butter’s online visibility is striking, yet Massaad is wary of mistaking that for strategy. “Social media is a mirror. If people share their visit, it’s because the Swiss Butter experience was delivered, or wasn’t,” he says. “We don’t see social media as our strategy. We see it as a signal. When guests share their experience, we listen. We focus our efforts on proving the Swiss Butter experience to our guests, and social media simply shows us whether we’re delivering.”
His approach to hospitality is rooted in where he is from as much as in what he has built. “Being from the Middle East shaped my approach to hospitality. It teaches you that taking care of people isn’t a tactic, it’s a standard,” he says. “Working across different countries taught me to adapt without compromising what matters. I don’t expect things to operate exactly the same way in Bahrain as they do in Spain, but the foundation stays the same: respect, accountability, and doing things properly every single time.”
That foundation now supports a brand with international recognition, but Massaad’s definition of success has shifted with each phase of the journey. “Success used to mean survival. Then it meant scale. Now, it means endurance,” he says. “I don’t want Swiss Butter to be a moment, I want it to be a benchmark. That takes systems that hold, and leaders who can build on them long after me. If it only works when I’m in the room, it isn’t working at all.”
On any given evening, the queues outside Swiss Butter suggest the model is holding. The plates look the same, the sauce connects the dots, and the atmosphere feels familiar, even in cities thousands of kilometres apart. For Massaad, that is the real achievement: proving that restraint, executed with heart and discipline, can travel just as far as spectacle.
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