A homegrown recipe for success Hind al Mulla’s treats are not just feeding the UAE’s sweet tooth; she is also one of the nation’s most hands-on business owners BY NATASHA TOURISH
While other children her age filled their summer holidays with movies and sinking their teeth into sugary snacks, bakery founder Hind al Mulla went on a culinary journey most chefs could only dream of. It was thanks to her father, the Emirati lawyer Habib Al Mulla, who took his young family to some of Europe’s finest restaurants every summer, often travelling up to two hours from their hotel to reach a remote Michelin starred restaurant in the south of France. While Al Mulla dined with his wife, his three children dissected and critiqued the food, course by course. “My father would make us try whatever was placed in front of us. I was always a fussy eater but he would say: ‘You have to try a little, how else will you know if you like it or not.’ He would go around the table and ask us to rate each dish afterwards,” says Hind, who created the Home Bakery in Dubai to recreate some of her favourite childhood tastes. One of her most memorable childhood experiences was dining in the two Michelin starred Le Cinq restaurant in the Four Seasons George V hotel in Paris. “I remember we were presented with a 12-course dinner. It was amazing,” she says. “Every time we would go to France after that, I would say: ‘Please can we go to that restaurant?’ but my father would say: ‘No, we have others to try’.” This early masterclass in haute cuisine laid the foundations for the 28-year-old’s own career in the food industry. While it is more comfort eating than fine dining, Hind now runs the Home Bakery on Al Wasl road. The cosy cafe dishes out homemade desserts with a twist, from salted caramel and peanut butter cake to caramel popcorn cookies and a variety of flavoured cronuts — an import from the US, except these ones are homemade. Unsurprisingly, Hind credits her father for her finely tuned pallette and says her siblings, who are also shareholders in her business, are “all foodies”. For her though, dessert is the most important part of any
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good meal. “No matter how full I am after dinner, I’ll always leave room for dessert. I will want to try as many as I can and nibble on them all.” Hind might attribute her sweet tooth to her father, having grown up eating the luxury Belgium chocolate Godiva. “My father used to keep a box of Godiva on his bedside locker. Every night when he came home from work, he allowed us to go and have a chocolate as a treat before bed.” However, her practical culinary skills were inherited from her mother, who taught her how to bake her first pound cake at the age of 10. “We made two layers of sponge and smothered one in Nutella and the other in cream and then layered them on top of each other. It wasn’t very pretty but it tasted good.” That is a mantra Hind has built her Home Bakery ethos upon — at least in her kitchen operations. As we sit in the small cafe in Jumeirah, which was designed by London interior design firm, Blacksheep, the young entrepreneur tells me it took more than a year for her family and friends to convince her to put her now famous chocolate chip cookies on the menu because she was worried they were “too ugly”, even though she knew they “tasted amazing”. In the sweet treats in the glass fridge and along the long wooden countertop filled with plates of cookies, pastries and croissants, the lumps and bumps she talks about are clearly visible. It is a breath of fresh air in a town where expensive desserts have a mandatory shiny gloss and sit in pretty polished perfection on shelves. She explains her bakery idea was homegrown after friends and family convinced her to start selling her gourmet desserts. Hind says: “It was just an idea my friend put across to me but I had so many ideas going around in my head at the time. My husband had already opened a restaurant with some friends and it didn’t work out so they had to close it. “He told me if I was serious, I had to start from home first and build it up from there before I could get a shop. I think that was the best advice he ever could have given me.”
Knowing if she was to succeed with her own bakery business, she had to offer her Emirati clients something different, Hind started off with a small menu of macaroons and biscotti, which she prepared daily from her own kitchen at home. “It was at a time when everyone was going crazy for cupcakes but for me it is just sugar. I wanted to get people to try something different. There are much better desserts out there.” It was not long before word spread. “I remember the first Ramadan it went crazy. I did not sleep that whole Ramadan. I took orders all day long and cooked all night. The only two hours I had to myself were to shower and go and break my fast. I didn’t see my kids, I was just cooking and then cleaning the kitchen.” In July this year, after convincing her husband she was ready for her own outlet, Hind opened her first cafe in the new Galleria mall on Al Wasl Road. Although Home Bakery has only been open for four months, it has already been given the royal seal of approval. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the Ruler of Dubai, has dropped in several times unannounced after hearing there were Emiratis working behind the counter. His sons Sheikhs Majid and Hamdan are also said to be regulars - Majid is thought to have a soft spot for the homemade milkshakes. “Our biggest accomplishment yet has been having His Highness Sheikh Maktoum come in and tell us he is very proud of us and what we are doing,” says Hind. “He said people should look up to us as we are setting a good example for other locals.” The mother-of-two says she is aware she is breaking the mould among her Emirati peers as she has no need to work for financial reasons. She designed the interior to look like a franchise to give the appearance of an established brand. But Hind runs the family business herself and trains staff, even though she has no service experience. “This is my business. I didn’t get a franchise. If I did, they would have their own managers and people to do the training. “If you are doing something from scratch, you won’t know the mistakes, you won’t know the problems or how to fix them or how to evolve unless you actually work there yourself.” She was joined in setting up the business by her brother, who worked with her everyday from 6am until close at midnight for the first month. Now they have settled into a routine, the brother and sister duo split their day, managing a morning and afternoon shift between them. They have also hired a manager for the first time. For friends who wonder why they are doing what they do, the answer is simple for Hind: “I was very bored when I was just a stay-at-home mum. I studied for four years at university and thought this cannot be it for me. “Now I work in the mornings and from 2.30pm onwards, I pick up my kids and I’m all theirs for the rest of the day.” The young entrepreneur has ambitious plans to open a second Home Bakery outlet. For now, she is remaining tightlipped about the location but says it will be overseas. While she is following in the footsteps of other well-known UAE restaurants that have exported their brands abroad, she is perhaps the first hands-on Emirati owner to do so.