After chairing the Hospitality Leaders Summit in Riyadh, Stefan Breg reflects on the extraordinary growth of Saudi F&B, and why the next phase is about building businesses with staying power while developing a dining culture that is increasingly, and distinctively, Saudi.

I recently had the pleasure of chairing the Hospitality Leaders Summit at Hotel & Hospitality Expo Saudi Arabia in Riyadh, where I spent an afternoon discussing the future of F&B with some of the people helping to shape it.

There were some refreshingly candid conversations about growth, creativity, risk and where Saudi F&B goes next. And the more we talked, the more I found myself coming back to one question.

So, what comes next?

Because the numbers around Saudi F&B are extraordinary. According to Mukatafa, the number of active restaurants and cafés in Saudi Arabia has risen from around 57,000 to more than 112,000 in just three years. Over the same period, the market has grown from approximately SAR 80bn to SAR 100bn.

Our own research points to just how much appetite remains. When we surveyed 1,000 Saudis, 55% told us they would invest in F&B within the next five years. Not 5%. 55%. There’s clearly no shortage of ambition. And there’s little to suggest that appetite is disappearing.

But I think Saudi F&B is entering a different phase. The question isn’t simply how much more can we build? It’s how much of what we build will still be here in five or ten years.

Growth is one thing. Staying power is another.

When a market is moving this quickly, opportunity naturally attracts investment. New restaurants, cafés and concepts arrive, competition increases and everyone wants a piece of the action. But another restaurant isn’t automatically the answer.

As the market continues to grow, we need commercially sustainable businesses with a clear reason to exist. Concepts that understand their guests, their market and their operating model. And perhaps, occasionally, the confidence to conclude that the right answer isn’t to open something at all.

That means balancing ambition with risk and asking some harder questions about longevity.

Can the concept remain relevant? Can it operate profitably? Does it genuinely add something to the market? And, increasingly importantly, could it exist anywhere else?

That last question brings me to something else I kept hearing in Riyadh.

Saudi F&B is maturing.

I understand the sentiment. But I’m not convinced maturing is quite the right word. Maturing towards what? London? New York? Dubai?

The more time I spend in Saudi Arabia, the clearer it becomes that the market isn’t simply progressing towards somebody else’s definition of a developed F&B scene.

Saudi is increasingly choosing its own path.

The influences feeding into that are changing too. For a long time, international inspiration across the region often meant looking West.

Today, we’re seeing younger Saudis looking East as much as West – towards Japan, Korea, Thailand and China for food, travel, culture and inspiration.

That creates a much richer melting pot for the next generation of Saudi concepts.

But international influence shouldn’t mean international sameness. My colleague Barbara Kardos explored this in her own reflections from the Summit: as Saudi dining absorbs ideas, flavours and experiences from around the world, how does it evolve without becoming interchangeable with everywhere else? I think that’s one of the defining questions for what comes next.

Because alongside the sheer entrepreneurial energy in the market, we’re seeing something else emerge. More confidence. More sophistication. More willingness to take an idea and interpret it through a Saudi lens rather than simply importing what has worked elsewhere.

And, increasingly, its own flair.

I spend a good part of my time in my second home in Thailand, and there’s an interesting comparison. Thailand hasn’t simply built a successful restaurant industry. It has used food to help define the country.

Food is inseparable from the experience of visiting Thailand. It’s part of why people come, what they seek out when they arrive, what they remember afterwards and what they talk about when they go home.

Saudi Arabia has the opportunity to do something equally powerful – but entirely in its own way. That won’t come from replicating Bangkok, London, New York or anywhere else. Nor does it mean looking backwards and deciding Saudi food must remain fixed in a particular definition of tradition. It comes from having the confidence to evolve.

To take local ingredients, traditions and hospitality and allow them to interact with the enormous range of influences entering the Kingdom. To create businesses that make commercial sense today but have enough substance to remain relevant tomorrow.

Saudi F&B is booming. And that’s what makes this next phase so interesting.

The question is no longer simply how many restaurants and cafés the market can support. It’s what kind of F&B culture that growth will ultimately create. Barbara’s question is what identity comes out of it.

Mine is how much of it will still be here in ten years. Both matter. And I suspect what comes next will be much more interesting.

Thanks to the Hotel & Hospitality Expo Saudi Arabia team and everyone who joined us at the Hospitality Leaders Summit – particularly Ghassan Sakr, Dr. Kamran Khan, Bilal Saleh, Jason Dell, Mohammed Albasha and Naji Berjawi – for conversations that gave me plenty to think about.