How 3Fils Built a Team for a Bigger Second Site

The original 3Fils at Dubai’s Jumeirah Fishing Harbour began with a single dining room. Its Abu Dhabi restaurant, which opened in July 2025, had a kitchen on one floor and three sections for diners. Chef Jhovani Manalo, who helped with the launch, told The National it was the team’s first time handling a space that large. The opening required hiring and training a much bigger team. At the same time, he wanted to keep the character of the Dubai restaurant and retain signature dishes while introducing some items for the new location. Manalo’s interview with The National

3Fils lists Manalo with its Dubai kitchen and Jun Kamiyama as head chef in Abu Dhabi. That gives the expansion story a useful distinction for someone managing across sites for the first time. Manalo helped develop the opening, while the second kitchen had a leader of its own. The public records describe the first experience of running a space on this scale. They do not establish that either chef was new to management. The case is useful for deciding what an opening team should teach, what a site lead should own and how a manager can tell whether both locations are ready to operate at the same time. 3Fils’ kitchen leadership and history

Work out what the original team does without saying

A compact restaurant can run on cues that are hard to see from outside. A cook may know when to replenish a station because a colleague calls out an order. The person who finishes a plate may be able to see whether someone is ready to take it. In a larger building, those moments can be spread across different rooms or floors. A supervisor needs to decide who notices the signal, how it travels and which person acts on it. The challenge is to teach the work that happened informally when the first team could see and hear one another.

For a first-time multisite manager, spend part of a shift following one service request from beginning to end. In a fictional restaurant, that could be a table asking to hold part of its order while a guest steps away. Follow the request from the dining area to the kitchen and back. Note where staff confirm a change and where someone relies on a colleague remembering it. Rehearse the same request in the new space, with the people who will actually run it. The difference between the two routes can show what needs a written rule, a clearer signal or a person assigned to own the handoff.

Manalo’s account gives a reason to do that work early. He describes trying to preserve the feel of the Dubai restaurant while asking how much needed to change in a bigger venue. Translate that ambition into things people can observe. If the promise is a relaxed welcome, test how guests are greeted and how the team gives updates when tables are unavailable. If the promise is a consistent signature dish, test whether the kitchen can finish and deliver it in the intended condition even when several sections order at once. The exercise gives the manager a way to preserve an experience while changing the steps that deliver it. Manalo on adapting the restaurant to the larger space

3Fils’ October 2026 Instagram reel shows a kitchen worker and explains the brand’s approach to balancing flavours and textures. It provides a public example of a standard the team communicates to customers. The reel gives no view of how the opening team was trained.

Choose the people who can teach a shift

A second site needs people who can recognise good work and show others how to do it. Pick trainers who can explain decisions during a quiet rehearsal and then observe a new colleague during a busy period. Give them a short list of tasks to watch. A trainer can sign off when the learner can carry out a handoff, recognise an exception and explain who needs to know. Attendance at a demonstration can be useful to record. It takes an observed shift to see whether the person can apply what they learned.

Make a plan for the home site before assigning its experienced staff to the opening. If its strongest supervisor spends three weeks at the new location, someone has to cover their decisions at the original one. Give that person a chance to run the shift while the supervisor is still available for questions. An opening that depends on moving all the experienced staff at once can expose both branches to staffing gaps. Use a rota with names and dates to see where supervision is thin and where a training assignment needs to be staggered.

Keep a record of what each person has practised. Someone may be ready to open a station and need more help closing it. Another may handle an ordinary service and struggle when equipment fails or several orders need changing at once. A manager who knows those differences can put people together on a shift so they have support in the situations they have yet to see. That is more useful than treating a whole group as trained on the day it finishes induction.

Give the local lead room to run the site

3Fils still lists both Jumeirah Fishing Harbour and Al Bateen Marina. Its own account names a head chef in Abu Dhabi and describes a common approach to the food. Manalo’s interview also describes keeping familiar dishes while adapting parts of the menu to the new location. Those choices illustrate the balance a manager has to define. Some standards should travel between sites. Others can be adapted by people who see the local work every day. The records give no detailed account of how 3Fils allocated individual decisions. 3Fils’ locations · 3Fils’ team page

Write down the decisions the local lead can make during a shift and what needs to be escalated. For a fictional operation, they might move staff between sections within the agreed rota or temporarily pause an item the kitchen cannot deliver to standard. A permanent menu or price change may need a different review. Set a response expectation for escalation. A rule that requires permission loses its value if the person who can give it is unreachable while the issue is unfolding.

Ask both sites to report a small set of comparable facts. That might include which posts were uncovered, which services ran with the planned staffing and which problems came back after being marked resolved. Compare the records in a regular review. If the same issue appears in both locations, it may be a training or process problem. If it appears at only one, inspect the layout, hours or team mix before changing the shared standard. The local lead can bring an account of what happened while the manager looks for a pattern across sites.

Test whether the team can work without the opening crew

A new branch can look ready on a night when trainers and senior managers are on the floor. Run a rehearsal in which those people observe and the scheduled team makes the decisions. Include an ordinary service and at least one exception, such as a late delivery or a key person being absent. Watch who gets called and how often the observer has to intervene. If a decision repeatedly goes back to the visiting manager, find out whether the local lead needs practice, a clearer limit or access to information.

Then check the original site in the same period. Imagine a business with two supervisors at the original branch and two people preparing to take on that role at the new branch. A rota may appear to cover both sites as long as nobody takes leave. Test the next two weeks against training, rest days and the hours each site needs covered. Put the names of deputies into the plan and see which shifts still have a single point of failure. That is a more realistic readiness check than counting employees across the whole business.

After the opening, separate service outcomes from training activity. A manager could record that everyone completed the practice sequence and still see orders repeatedly delayed between floors. Follow a sample of delayed orders to learn whether the receiving station was short of people, whether staff could see what was waiting or whether the shift lead had no way to change priorities. The first answer may call for a rota change, the second for a clearer signal, and the third for a decision the local lead needs permission to make.

Compare the same interval at both sites

Choose an interval that answers the question. A weekly average can obscure a shortage concentrated in the busiest part of the evening. Ask each lead to report a comparable service window and the volume each team handled. Add an exception note when the conditions differed, such as a section being closed or a supervisor covering elsewhere. A good comparison gives the manager a reason to visit and observe one step instead of assuming that a site with a slower average needs more training everywhere.

Keep a note of the fixes each site has already tried. If moving a person between stations solved the problem on one shift but failed on another, record what changed between them. That turns a rota adjustment into a test the next lead can repeat.

Keep opening lessons useful for both sites

Record one case in each review where the team recovered well and one where the problem returned. Describe the exact handoff, who saw it first and which response was possible at the time. Share the case with the other location only after stripping out anything that needlessly identifies staff or customers. Ask the other lead where the same failure could occur in their building. The discussion may produce a common standard with a different procedure for each floor plan.

Give the launch team a date to hand its remaining responsibilities to the site lead. Where the site needs another week of coaching, identify the task it still needs to perform and how the manager will observe it. Once the local team can handle ordinary work and escalate exceptions without depending on a visitor, the opening crew can step back. That is the decision the first-time multisite manager needs to be able to make at each location.