What do you get when you fuse great food, cool decor, authentic music and visual compelling content and a yard vibe that is second to none? The end result is the newest fast-casual dining experience, designed to titillate your taste buds and have you reconnecting with everything you love about old school dancehall and reggae.
All that is set for the highly anticipated Sumfest Acoustic Café, the latest offering from the KLE Group that will provide patrons with a new healthy, culinary point of view and also facilitate music aficionados indulging in the best of the best local music, all in one restaurant.
This ‘360-degree Jamaican experience’ is the brainchild of Gary Matalon, entrepreneur and Managing Director of Franchise Jamaica or FRANJAM, which was formed 3 years ago to handle franchising operation. The KLE Group essentially manage the affairs of FRANJAM.
What we’ve learnt is that the selling process is expensive, takes quite a while and the due diligence process is very involved. Then I thought why not have a couple of other brands in the portfolio for people who may not qualify for a Tracks and Record franchise but who will be great for another concept so, with the brand Jamaica theme, we sought to leverage that into a more affordable, more simple concept. We looked at foodservice trends and fast casual restaurants like Chipotle, which is booming at a whole new level overseas, so we sought to target 
Seizing a perfect opportunity which presented it, Matalon felt the 25th Anniversary of the greatest reggae show on earth would be the perfect place to introduce it to the world. As entertainment mogul Joe Bogdanovich of DownSound Entertainment had recently purchased the rights to Reggae Sumfest, Matalon decided to reach out to him to win their new idea with the entertainment festival and as they say, the rest is history.
“We wanted to know if he had gotten the content of the past 25 years and explained that with the content we can create an experience second to none because we can showcase footage of artistes who have died, who are incarcerated, retired and generally artistes people would really wish to see again. So we weighed our options and decided to launch it at the 25th anniversary of Sumfest this past July to the public as a pop-up restaurant. The execution was a tremendous success and since the festival, we have had quite a bit of interest as over the two night period, the pop-up served approximately 2,500 patrons from a 1,400 square foot space and people were loving every second of it.”
For the Sumfest Acoustic Café, the look and feel will be all about Brand Jamaica, serving up not only a delicious menu offering crafted for the hip and health conscious but additionally, a big portion of classic performances from some of the greatest Reggae, Dancehall, R&B and Pop artists, on the side. This footage will serve as the soundtrack for the restaurant, enhancing its overall authentic experience with every location providing an authentic Jamaican stage show experience that will be ‘pure niceness.’
To Read More: Purchase your copy of Volume 9 #4– September-October 2017