By Amy Bostock
Since the company’s establishment about 12 years ago, Toronto-based Scale Hospitality has cemented itself as a key player in Ontario’s restaurant landscape, delivering its unique brand of experience-centric dining through 20 restaurants and event venues in the GTA. Its current restaurant portfolio includes, Antonio Park, Miss Likklemore’s, The Wheatsheaf Tavern, Chica, Pink Sky, Patria, The Miller Tavern, Lapinou, GG’s Burgers The Fortunate Fox, Figo Byblos, Le Select Bistro, Maxime’s and Toronto Beach Club. Event venues include The Storys Building, and The Pearl.
This year’s Regional Company of the Year, Scale was founded by CEO Hanif Harji and Chairman Terry Tsianos, who had both long been immersed in the hospitality industry in their own way — Harji doing hospitality consulting in Europe and Asia; Tsianos owning the Fox & Fiddle chain, as well as The Wheatsheaf Tavern and Palais Royale in Toronto.
“When I came back to Toronto, we really felt that what I’d seen globally would be well received here in Toronto,” Harji explains. “The two of us came together when an opportunity came up…We had the same ambitions and goals and true hospitality runs in our blood, so it made sense for us to jump into the business together.”
The business that formed by their partnership was named for the kind of operation they hoped to achieve. “We love the word scale, because it’s a very precise unit of measure [and] it represents growth,” says Harji. “We wanted to ensure we had a very precise business plan for our growth, so we thought that name was great.”
Beyond this, Harji explains, “Our goal was to create a hospitality company that was 100-per-cent unique; really focused in on delivering a consumer experience that was memorable and that spoke to customers based on service, design and culinary offerings; then making sure we supported it with strong marketing and collateral that spoke to the brands that we ran.”
Scale’s portfolio of brands includes recent additions such as the European steakhouse concept Maxime’s, which opened in August of 2023 in Toronto’s King West neighbourhood. Here, Harji notes, “we [incorporated] sound, music, lighting and entertainment into a steakhouse experience. It’s not the stodgy old steakhouse that people are used to.”
A few months later, the company also celebrated the re-opening of King Street’s staple Spanish restaurant, Patria, which had been forced to close in 2022 due to water damage. This new iteration of the concept features a refreshed interior, as well as an updated menu that balances new additions and long-time favourites.
The Scale Hospitality team has also had a hand in a number of other projects, which leverage its industry expertise and desire to create top-class dining experiences. As Harji explains, “We have three specific lines of business: owned and operated restaurants; third-party managed restaurants; and third-party consulting work.”
And, recent years have seen a notable focus on hotel food-and-beverage outlets. One example is Frenchy Bar et Brasserie. Scale collaborated with hotel owner Barney River and DesignAgency to transform the main lobby and welcome experience at Hilton Toronto. The Parisian-inspired lobby bar and lounge, which opened in February, forms the heart of the re-designed space, offering a “relaxed yet refined ambiance.”
“We were able to re-invigorate our third-party consulting work and hotel consulting work, which was great to see,” Harji says. “Premium hotels have reached out looking for us to help figure out a concept, come up with a design, put together a marketing strategy, help them launch in local markets. That has been really exciting and a great part of our business that we’re enjoying a really nice resurgence in.”
The reputation the company’s developed within this sphere has led to a number of projects in development stateside. The team is currently working on the food and beverage for a new Sixty Hotels location in Washington, D.C. “We’re doing a restaurant on the main floor, a cocktail bar in the back of the hotel with a separate entrance and a beautiful rooftop patio,” Harji shares.
And, behind the scenes, the growth and evolution Scale Hospitality has experienced is ultimately fuelled by the teams that make it up. The company has managed to foster an internal culture that has set up not only the group, but the individuals working for it for success.
“We’ve had employees that have worked with us for decades, and we’ve developed young talent that has gone on to have their own Food Network shows and their own restaurants, and that kind of legacy is nice,” says Harji. “As we’ve grown this company, we’ve been able to attract really great talent.”
And, as Harji explains, passion, openness and curiosity form vital cornerstones of Scale’s internal culture. “We put a lot of time and energy in training our people and exposing them to different cultures, culinary, design,” he shares. “We’re very inclusive. We don’t like working in silos, so from the marketing person to the chef in the kitchen, to the ops person, the communication is across the board. We’re sharing ideas…we’re always engaging in the world of hospitality in a kind of obsessive, compulsive way. And, we find that when people start to understand your obsession with it, then they find their passion through it.”
In fact, Harji and the Scale team are passionate about giving others the opportunity to experience the passion inherent within the hospitality industry. “For me, hospitality wasn’t a direct line,” Harji shares. “I didn’t see it as an opportunity growing up as an ethnic minority and first-generation immigrant. So, we want to make sure we have an open-door policy. It’s about building confidence [and] people walking into one of our restaurants, or our organization, and feeling that they have a path forward.”
In line with this desire, Scale Hospitality works with culinary schools to take part in events, speaking engagements and providing opportunities for internships and stages. It has also worked closely with government organizations to make connections with the communities it operates in. This includes participating in a program designed to help those leaving the justice system or with prior criminal records find stable employment.
“We [also] do everything we can to support new immigrants who want to get into the industry,” Harji adds. “Our philosophy is hire for attitude and you can train everything else.”
It’s this desire to foster a passion for hospitality in others that continues to drive the team forward. “The company is evolving. We’re figuring out our niche and our specialization,” says Harji. “Every restaurant we’ve opened has been very well received by the community and by the public. We’ve seen success in multiple markets — in Canada, the U.S. and the Middle East — which encouraged us to really believe that what we’re doing is globally viable.”
This buoying confidence is being channeled into a growing array of ongoing and future projects. “We have a project that we’re hoping to open in 2025 with a local hotel company. I can’t mention it yet, but it is a very, very exciting opportunity for us,” Harji teases.
“We’re [also] looking to expand the AP brand internationally,” he notes, pointing to the success of Scale Hospitality and Antonio Park’s pan-Asian fine-dining concept, which opened in Toronto in late 2022. “Chef Antonio Park and I’ve known each other for a long time. We collaborated on our first restaurant together about a year-and-a-half ago, and there’s been a lot of interest in that brand and that concept for hotels and other markets, so we’re exploring those as well.”
Additional projects in the works include third-party consulting in the Caribbean and plans to bring an integration of its haute Caribbean-inspired concept, Miss Likklemore’s, to Washington, D.C.
But, through all of this excitement, the team hasn’t lost sight of the precepts of precision and measured growth that Scale Hospitality was named for. “We really want to take our time, do it right; grow organically — grow when we feel like we have time, energy and the bandwidth to do what we do at the highest level that we possibly can,” says Harji.
