The Story of Cookies Break Sweets

Today's story is about Mr. Ahmed Ali Sultan Saeed Aljaberi and his journey from a civil engineer based in UAE to being an entrepreneur and the owner of Cookies Break sweets, a cafe and snacks bar specialized in specialty coffees, cookies and sweets to name a few. His journey is filled with a lot of ups and downs. And this 32-year-old man continues to experiment, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes and eventually improves. He is a man who is ready and has the courage to acknowledge the past mistakes he has made, analyze them and rectify them.

Mr. Ahmed is working as a civil engineer in Al Ain Distribution Company. And as a first step, in the month of August 2016, he brought a shop to pursue his goal to be an entrepreneur. The shop was initially a barber shop and in 4 months, he did all the preparations and converted it into a modern cookie store with advanced kitchen. He had to start from the scratch. Firstly, he himself had to understand all the legal requirements, rules and regulations and specifications required by the government and also the paper works and other formalities that were to be completed and then had to get permissions and implement them. Mr. Ahmed says that in this journey, his friends helped and encouraged him throughout this phase. One of his friend Mr. Khalid, who is founder of many popular establishments. And finally, as a result of all the hard work, after 4 months, on 05th December 2016, his first Cookies Break sweets outlet was inaugurated in Al Ain, UAE.

He believes that before we start anything, firstly we have to understand the market needs and then also we have to analyze what we are good at. Then we have to select something which the market needs and at the same time we have to ensure that we are good at it. Also, he believes that if we start something by seeing some other person or depending upon some expert person (in his case a good chef), there is a possibility that in the future, this person might leave us. And it will be very difficult for the firm to cope up with this situation in such a stage. He says, instead of depending upon a person, we need to develop an idea and work on it and then perfect this idea and execute it.

In his case, he came up with the idea of Cookies Break sweets from another similar shop in Abu Dhabi called Camel cookies. He was very much fond of the Camel Cookies and understood that in his city Al Ain, there were no similar shops at the time. He identified that there is an opportunity. He made up his mind to seize this opportunity. Even though he believes that we shouldn't copy someone's idea completely but have to get inspiration from the ideas and develop your own ideas from those inspirations, he says that he initially inspired from the ideas and now he is developing it. Also, he says that his wife is a good cook and she had good recipes and he attempted making cookies from his own home in the initial stages. Mr. Ahmed gives the credits to his wife for helping him create this business in the initial stages. They made use of homely ingredients and recipes in the initial stages.

He then hired 2 employees in which one person was an assistant in another company who expired his labour contract in that firm. But he recalls this step as his first mistake. The reason he states for considering this step as his first mistake is because these two people did not have any experience or expertise in the area. He had to take care of each and everything including training them, formulating plans and policies, making the recipes right and so on. He says that we have to hire experts in order to ensure that they help us concentrate in certain areas where we are good at and they will take care of the areas where they are good at. He understood this only in 2018 when he hired two new chefs (an Indian and the other was a Sri Lankan) for the new outlet of Cookies Break sweets in Abu Dhabi where they had previous experience in hotels and expertise. With these chef's, he was able to clear his doubts regarding the cooking aspects and also, he was able to concentrate in those areas which he was good at. He also says that we have to create clear processes so that our firm goes on and change in personnel will not affect the working of the firm. He believes and strongly stand for implementing standard operating procedures in business.

Even though in the initial stages they just served coffee and cookies, now they also serve chocolates, sweets, cakes as well. And Mr. Ahmed says that his firm's advantage over other firm's is, their name itself. Unlike some of the competitors of the firm, their name limit to just cookies. They don’t have the possibility to expand their product portfolio. He is happy in his decision to name Cookies Break sweets. Currently cookies are a more prominent item in their different products both in the minds of the customers as well as himself. He now has plans to focus more on sweets as well.

Mr. Ahmed identifies his friends who never fail to motivate and inspire him and his personality wherein he is an operational man who has the ability to attract good people as the factors that helped him succeed in his endeavors. And the major challenges he faced in setting up his business were some financial issues, lack of experience and expertise, lack of consultants whom he can rely upon and also there were time constraints (to spare time from his professional life for the sake of his business) as mentioned earlier.

He is inspired by Jack Ma, Chinese business magnate, investor and politician who co-founded Alibaba group. He also is inspired by Steve Jobs of Apple. He feels that people like Jack Ma give his 100% even when under great pressure.

He says to the budding or young entrepreneurs that you can work on something that you like in a wise manner. And do everything in a step by step manner and not to jump without making the base firm. He says that you should take help from consultants whenever necessary. And achieve your and aim to achieve your objectives, goals and dreams. He says that a good entrepreneur should have good leadership skills, operational skills and also networking skills. Even though he believes all these qualities are important and necessary, the most important one is Leadership. And he believes that the experience is the best teacher.

He often read books and acquire knowledge from many sources. The most recent book he was reading is an English book translated into Arabic named “How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job” written by Dale Carnegie. He believes that this book teaches a valuable lesson.

Our team is wishing Mr. Ahmed all the very best and may all his future endeavors be successful.