QUOTED FROM YAVUZ İSKENDEROĞLU
"The success of a product or brand lies in not only having some bright ideas but also caring about it and creating a corporate culture comprising all.
İskender is not the name of a food. The name of the food is "Döner Kebab". İskender Efendi's "döner(spinning) kebab" has come to be called just "döner" also. The name "İskender" has become identified with döner and been used as the name of the food too. Whereas, placing pita, yoghurt, sauce and others together in a plate is an invention of ours, and it makes our reliability, our approach to quality, our integration with customer psychology and our socialization.
Kebapçı İSKENDERâ-Yavuz İskenderoğlu is not just the name of a restaurant or location. For Bursa, it could be defined as a local culture while it could be considered a national cultural value for Turkey internationally. Having set out with the vision of creating a Turkish chain of restaurants just like the western ones that served locally first and then spread globally, Kebapçı İSKENDERâ-Yavuz İskenderoğlu has successfully come to these days with the mission of forming an institutionalized, industrialized organization adopting the philosophy of constant development and customer satisfaction, reserving all its trademark rights, giving franchises, following the principle of commitment and benefiting from the history and experiences today.
Possessing the trademark of İskender is a great pleasure, but it also burdens us with a heavy responsibility. That responsibility has nothing to do with my personal profits or losses. It stems from the reputation of the İskender trademark, which has already gone beyond Turkey. İskender became a value of Turkey at the time its reputation went beyond the borders of the country. For this reason, we consider making that name born years ago an international trademark a service to the nation, and we devote all our efforts keeping that in mind. Taking into account all these; we believe that we should have been in the Turquality Project, but we missed the opportunity because of some legal provisions. Thus, we think it is a great loss for Turkey that we were not supported despite all the contributions we could have made into the promotion of Turkey and foreign exchange inflow.
When we make some future projections in the light of all those experiences, the values to have an increasing importance in the sectors of agriculture and food in the new millennium seem to be productivity, standardization, natural and healthy products, and hygiene and quality in products and service.
Having made huge steps to achieve standardization and become one of the prominent trademarks in the sector today, we appreciate the weighty responsibility of serving in an area where hygiene and quality are hugely important, and we see ourselves responsible for serving also our stakeholders in the best way possible. Due to the social responsibility we shoulder and being a reliable trademark, we received ISO 9001:2000 certification, and I proudly declare that we became the first in Turkey in the category of "Döner (kebab) Production and Presentation" to be certified by HACCP 1300, which is the most important certificate in the food sector.
Today's style of organic production and nourishment has already been adopted since the establishment of Kebapçı İSKENDERâ-Yavuz İskenderoğlu. Our firm produces the organic İskender Döner Kebab in conformity with the world standards without any chemicals or additives and using only the meat obtained from animals bred and fed in natural environments (I desire to reemphasize here that I am so careful with this issue).
To improve the quality even further in the name of the trademark of "Kebapçı İSKENDERâ-Yavuz İskenderoğlu", I personally feel myself more and more responsible. Even though I am one of the members of a family who have improved themselves with the awareness of having done the same job for over 100 years, I do not think it is sufficient on its own to achieve customer satisfaction. Not making any concessions about the unwritten law of my family (our customs and traditions, our culture), I have tried to make it into some written and applicable rules, and improve the trademark in order to institutionalize in a way that rests on western standards. The efforts I have devoted for a long time have produced positive results, and that proves I am on the right track.
Actually, it has not been that easy to arrive from a kebab made with just a knife and sharpening steel to the one today, which is produced in conformity with the world food standards. As a person who has never given up the struggle to do that, I wish my efforts would set a good example for all the members of my family and/or the people who do or will do this job.
Speaking as Yavuz İskenderoğlu (Kebapçı İSKENDERâ-Yavuz İskenderoğlu), I now see that our ancestors' principle "do not give to others what you would not eat yourself" has gone as far as to the "food safety right from the field to the fork" approach, and the importance we attach to nourishment sets a good example and is some kind of social responsibility in a sector where I believe we do not just feed people but do a job directly related to their health. I leave all these views and beliefs to people's discretion. |
