ABOUT CAUSEWAY RETAIL

Three decades running grocery retail. Now in your corner.

Causeway Retail was founded on a simple conviction: the best retail advice comes from people who have carried the number themselves. Our principal, Michael Lomas, has led grocery operations at every scale — from a family convenience store in Manchester to executive leadership of one of Saudi Arabia’s largest grocery estates.

Retail isn’t on the CV. It’s in the blood.

“I started behind the counter of my parents’ shop at seven years old. Thirty years later — across three countries and four hundred stores — I’m still asking the same question: why is this harder than it needs to be?”
— Michael Lomas, Founder & Managing Partner

Michael’s career began before it officially started. His parents bought their first convenience store while his mother was pregnant with him; by thirteen he was running the shop at weekends. That grounding — where every wasted case and every empty shelf came straight out of the family’s living — has shaped how he works ever since.

What followed was a deliberate climb through every layer of the industry: the shop floor at ASDA Walmart, fuel retail with Total UK, eleven years building a UK convenience franchise group to 260% growth, then the Gulf — where he spent a decade leading some of the region’s most demanding retail estates.

He has opened first-of-their-kind hypermarkets in Jeddah, built ADNOC’s retail excellence programme across 486 fuel-and-convenience sites, created a convenience vertical from a blank page for Bindawood Holding, and served as Vice President at Abdullah Al-Othaim Markets — leading operations excellence, ERP transformation and store development across a 400-plus store national estate.

Causeway Retail exists to put that experience to work for ambitious retailers and investors. The name is the method: a causeway is the bridge between two solid places — in our case, between board-level strategy and the shop floor that has to deliver it.

An executive record, not a client list.

• 2025–2026 · Vice President, Operations Excellence & Support — Abdullah Al-Othaim Markets, KSA. Strategic leadership of operations excellence, ERP implementation, process governance and store development across 400+ stores; 50+ SOPs authored; 150+ active builds and renovations; planogram digitalisation and data-led assortment clustering.
• 2024–2025 · Vice President, Convenience — Abdullah Al-Othaim Markets, KSA. Built and scaled the group’s convenience network (92 stores, 1,000+ staff). New-format stores delivered +5pts margin vs network average; operational SOPs rolled out to 419 stores nationwide in two months.
• 2023–2024 · Senior Retail Operations Director, Convenience — BinDawood Holding, KSA. Created the group’s convenience vertical from the ground up — brand, formats, procurement, feasibility and board reporting across a business of 86 supermarkets and hypermarkets in three countries. Build costs down 35%; network revenue up 21% in twelve months.
• 2022–2023 · Department Manager, Business Excellence (Retail Group) — ADNOC Distribution, UAE. Business excellence across 486 fuel stations and 12,000 employees; standardised digital reporting across 44,000 data points; 14% commercial growth and an 18% pump-to-store conversion rate; founded the ADNOC Excellence Training Academy.
• 2018–2022 · Senior Retail Operations Manager — Urban Foods (Meraas / Dubai Holding), UAE. Géant-branded retail across the UAE: 40 stores opened in three years including 26 new builds; 14% average revenue growth; led group business continuity through COVID-19 with zero loss of trading.
• 2015–2018 · Senior operations roles — Lulu Group International (KSA) & The National Catering Company (UAE). Opened Jeddah’s first Lulu hypermarket; cut front-end waiting times 23%; ran 9 F&B/retail outlets with AED 167m turnover; central production saving 9%.
• 1999–2015 · United Kingdom. Director of Operations, Bargain Booze franchise group (260% growth, food-to-go concept supplying 14 sites); earlier roles with Total UK, Carphone Warehouse (top sales manager, NW region) and ASDA Walmart — after a childhood in the family’s convenience stores.

The principles we won’t trade.

A boutique by design.

Causeway Retail is deliberately small. Engagements are led personally by the principal and, where needed, delivered with a hand-picked bench of senior grocery specialists — category, supply chain, finance — drawn from our network across the Gulf and the UK. You get top-tier depth without the pyramid.

Based in London and Riyadh. Serving Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and the United Kingdom.