A blossoming business

It started out as a fun opportunity but became a real business,” says Mazen Maroun of Lotus Management Group, the hospitality development company which he and his brother Samer founded in 2003 with the launch of a sushi delivery service from La Gondole, their family owned pastry shop in Mar Elias. Ten years later, it has indeed become a solid business with 300 employees and two successful restaurant chains, Japanese restaurant Soto and Olio pizzeria, with six branches of each spread across Lebanon. Toward the end of 2013 — despite the instability in the country — the brothers launched a new restaurant, Prune, in one of the side streets of Mar Mkhayel, Beirut, which they perceive as a new challenge for their skills in the business. Their operations began with the concept of high quality, fresh, yet affordable sushi. “At that time, there were only a few and very expensive