Maia Orgogozo fell in love with Tianjin during her first visit of the city. She then spent more and more time there before eventually moving over from France. She realised some foreigners in Tianjin love the city very much, while some are homesick. In order to contribute to the happiness of both groups, she decided to make use of her cooking skills and opened a restaurant.
After almost two years of conducting all necessary registrations and setting up her business, Oh My Gourmet became operational in 2012. With Oh My Gourmet, Maia does not only offer dining at the restaurant, but catering, private dining and cooking lessons as well. Step by step, Maia managed a healthy growth of her business, always focusing on ensuring the top quality of service and food. The business is thriving, being amongst the top five rated restaurants in Tianjin on the website of TripAdvisor.
This success is based on the very hard work of the French entrepreneur. Maia said: “For an entrepreneur, there are new challenges every day, there is always work to do. You do not really have the time to sleep and can forget your social life in the first year of a new start-up, apart from that concerning work. It is very tough.” The second key factor to Maia’s success is that she rather invested more time in the beginning to ensure that her business is set up properly and compliant with all laws. Maia was not deterred by the long registration process, she feels that: “Those legal procedures take long everywhere in the world, it is just that China gives the idea that there are lots of possibilities for short cuts. This might be the case for locals but certainly not for foreigners.”
To ensure the legal compliance at all time, Maia needed the help of the EU SME Centre. After going through all the relevant guidelines on the Centre’s website, she enquired with the Centre’s legal experts. In order to find out the exact scope of Oh My Gourmet’s business license, the Centre’s legal expert launched an enquiry with officials in different cities and in the end secured a definite answer from officials in Tianjin. Maia appreciates the reliable and independent advice from the EU SME Centre and says that it helped her a lot during the initial phase of setting up her business.
When asked about the advice that Maia would like to give other European entrepreneurs in China, she recommends: “The competition in Tianjin as well as in China is very tough. There are new obstacles and challenges to your strategy and original ideas every day, so many things make you doubt. It is easy to lose focus on the original plan. It is of course important to stay flexible, adapt your product and strategy to each situation, but it is very important to stay focused, too. Never lose track of your goals and do not get distracted.”
