Meet Our Leadership Team

As CEO of Innovative Foods, Abdulmohsin has spent more than 25 years spreading his passion for food across Saudi Arabia. After founding his first restaurants while studying at King Saud University, the 2in1 restaurants, Abdulmohsin and his partners found inspiration in the shawarma to pioneer a concept for a new kind of restaurant, Shawarmer, that would boldly explore and experiment with modern interpretations of a traditional and beloved street food. He now leads the largest locally owned and operated quick-serve restaurant group in Saudi Arabia with a vision for spreading the joy of shawarma far beyond the Kingdom’s borders and Arabic world while continuing to use Innovative Foods to bring creative new restaurant concepts to the people of Saudi Arabia.

Abdulmohsin is committed to using Innovative Foods as a platform to inspire and support other young Saudi entrepreneurs to bring their visions to life in the form of viable, sustainable businesses that will contribute to the nation’s economic growth and diversification ambitions. He is also committed to exploring new ways to reduce food waste and contribute to food security across the Kingdom. Innovative Foods has a number of collaborations with Saudi Food Bank Eta’am to promote cooperation among restaurants to deliver surplus food to the needy. The company also collaborated with social incubator Tasamy to hold a competition that would ultimately fund entrepreneurial ideas for new businesses directly connected to reducing food waste.

Abdulmohsin earned his MBA from King Saud University after earning his BA in Electrical Engineering. In 2013 he was presented with the Business Leader award by Forbes Middle East, ranking 3rd in the Food and Beverage Industry. and he is an active member of Qout a quick service restaurants organization in Saudi Arabia.

Ahmed develops and manages the company's financial partner relationships. He also plays a key role developing and executing Innovative Foods investment strategy central to expansion of the Shawarmer footprint and improving existing restaurant financial and operational performance with a focus on investing in innovative customer-centric approaches to making the brand more accessible, convenient and efficient. His role includes managing the investment in Innovative Foods' new state-of-the-art central kitchen, which is pivotal to ensuring future capacity and overall quality performance to fuel continued Shawarmer expansion, as well as expanding the overall Innovative Foods' portfolio of brands.

Iyad joined Innovative Foods in 2011 as a marketing manager, he Switched the marketing structure into digital solution and located the budget to digital system. Innovative foods company became pioneer brand to explore marketing activity such as customer engagement and building digital content through social media.

After that his brother joined the company, he handed over the marketing and moved to Operations department, he leads the strategic development, testing and roll out out of new Shawarmer restaurant concepts. His group focuses on continuous improvement in the overall customer experience through integration of new food service technologies that bring greater convenience, accessibility and fully transparent quality control to Shawarmer restaurants.

As part of this effort, Iyad also helps lead the Shawarmer broader operational excellence program, working with a cross-functional team focused on the development of the more than 1,000 Innovative Foods and Shawarmer employees. The operational excellence program focuses on driving innovation in training and development as well as continuous operational and quality improvement programs that align with and advance the core Innovative Foods corporate brand values of commitment to Innovation, Hospitality, Excellence and Transparency.

Iyad earned his Bachelor’s of Science degree after studying Business Administration at California State University Long Beach. Prior to joining Innovative Foods, he was in the finance industry with SABB. 

Ghassan jointed Innovative Foods in 1999 and spent the last 20 years serving as the chief architect of the Shawarmer menu and the vision behind the a continuous commitment to innovation in the flavour and presentation of the shawarma. Ghassan leads a product development team that is constantly experimenting with the fusion and variation of sauces, spices, marinades and sandwich styles that keeps Shawarmer at the forefront of innovation in the never-ending mission to uncover new ways to modernize and interpret the traditional Arabic street food.

As Supply Chain Director, Ghassan is also responsible upholding the company’s commitment to seek out and source fresh and natural ingredients that have become a hallmark of the Shawarmer shawarma. Ghassan and his team travel the world to find partners who meet Innovative Foods’ strict supplier requirements. In his role heading the Innovative Foods Central Kitchen (CPU), Ghassan is responsible for overseeing food handling, preparation quality control protocols as well as the integration of state-of-the-art technology to help ensure that the vision behind the Shawarmer menu and the “fresh and natural” commitment come to life in every shawarma served.

Ghassan attended France’s renowned Icoges and Ecole Hoteliere Thonon Bains and brings to Innovative Foods a unique background as a chef as well as in hospitality and culinary management.

Faisal is responsible for developing and leading project management support for the company’s various business projects, business processes & enterprise-wide knowledge and change management. 

Prior to his position as Business Capabilities Director, Faisal served as director business development  and earlier as senior manager responsible for developing and managing Franchise system. He joined Innovative Foods back in 2005 as manager training & development after working as an operations specialists and leading training and development for Pizza Hut in Pakistan.

Zeyad is responsible for leading Innovative Foods' aggressive restaurant expansion and renovation program. With experience in commercial and restaurant industry development, he leads the team responsible for strategic planning, negotiation, budgeting and construction management of all new Shawarmer locations as well as the new Innovative Foods central kitchen. He is also leading project management for the renovation and upgrading of existing Shawarmer locations to integrate new design, technology and the open-kitchen environment from the new concept restaurants across Shawarmer locations.

Prior to joining Innovative Foods, Zeyad held a similar position of director of construction and project management at Riyadh international Catering Corporation/McDonalds, where he oversaw and managed the construction, renovation and maintenance of more than 80 McDonalds restaurants across the Kingdom. Zeyad earned his Master and BA degrees in Structural Engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology.