An American institution has finally arrived in the region. Via New York, Pennsylvania, Saudi and Jordan Fadi Jaber has brought the cupcake to the Middle East. With stores in Amman, Beirut and Dubai Sugar Daddy's offerings such as Red Velvet cake with butter roux frosting look like taking the dessert market by storm.
Fadi Jaber is showing that the way to Middle Easterners’ hearts is through their stomachs. With flour, sugar and butter, he is in the midst of building an empire that extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf. Jaber, 31, is the founder of Sugar Daddy's, the first American-style bakery chain in the Middle East.
Growing up in Saudi Arabia on an Aramco compound, he learned to appreciate the cupcakes and brownies that his classmates brought from home. His mother produced fabulous Arabic sweets, but she wouldn't make him the American stuff. So he learned to bake himself, buying boxes of Duncan Hines cake mix at the compound's commissary and whipping up his own cupcakes at home.
Later, as a high school student at a Pennsylvania boarding school, he befriended a Turkish classmate. Desperate to visit Turkey, and refused funding by his father, he spent his summer break holding bake sales in front of the local supermarket to raise money for a ticket.
“I made everything from a mix, but I blatantly lied and said it was from scratch. I think people felt sorry for me,” he said. By the time he had sufficient funds, it was time to go back to school.
Upon graduating from the College of William and Mary with a degree in business administration and marketing, Jaber returned to Jeddah even though his parents had retired to Jordan. He spent six years there ultimately reaching the level of marketing and brand manager for Unilever. But he tired of promoting brands such as Close Up and Vaseline, likening it to “taking care of someone else’s babies. Essentially, I wanted to create my own baby.”
He finally found his calling while on a trip to visit a friend in the US during the autumn of 2004. His friend had given him a copy of the cookbook More from Magnolia, by Allysa Torey, the founder of New York's famous Magnolia Bakery. He kept the book by his bed and every morning he would awaken to the cover shot of a tray of pastel-frosted cupcakes. So besotted with the image was he that he decided to visit the source itself, where he devoured a vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting, which is to this day his favorite combination.
From the first bite, Jaber says, “I knew that this is exactly what I wanted to open in Jordan. There was nothing like it in the region. It was all Arabic pastry shops, and a few French ones. Their cakes lacked soul,” he said.
Once back in Saudi, he researched various cooking schools from his cubicle at Unilever, eventually settling on the Institute for Culinary Education in New York, which offered a joint Pastry Arts and Culinary Management degree. He liquidated his various mutual fund portfolios and bank accounts to pay for his tuition. At the end of his course, he did a three-month internship at Billy’s Bakery in Chelsea, which makes similar products to Magnolia. In May of 2006, he returned to Jordan, where his brother and his retired father became his first investors.
He installed himself in his parents' home while the shop was being built, and revved up his social life, accepting any invitation that came his way. He attended dinner parties and embassy functions in order to spread the word about his business, and also made some dear friends along the way. Working out of his family's own kitchen, he did custom orders for some of Amman's top hostesses. It being Amman, word spread quickly, and soon his frosted layer cakes and cupcakes were de rigeur.
The Amman shop, a warmly lit haven in the Abdoun neighborhood, is painted a Ladurée-esque mint green. It sells almost 500 cupcakes a day, as well as lemon bars, brownies, mini-cheesecakes, cookies, banoffee pie, and made-to-order cakes and pies, to what Jaber says is a 95 per cent female clientele that includes the royal family. On a recent rainy spring day, a few of King Abdullah's nieces stopped by in casual clothing, leaving their bodyguards outside and nonchalantly compiling an expertly chosen selection of cupcakes. Even Queen Rania is purported to be a fan.
Late last year, he opened two franchise operations with partners in Beirut and Dubai, and has his sights set on Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam. Despite a general current of anti-Americanism in the region, he envisions a limitless market for his product. “These desserts have a universal appeal,” he says.
Jaber spends most of his time now in the Amman shop, doting on customers and explaining what the quirkily named products are. ‘Fake Blonde’ for example, is a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting. ‘Blind Date’ is a sticky toffee date cake with cream cheese frosting. When he's not in the shop, he cruises around Amman doing making hand-deliveries of custom orders. This personal touch, he believes, is the secret to his success.
"I treat everyone as if they're a rock star, because in some way, everyone is."
Sugar Daddy’s Jordan
Abdoun Kurdi Plaza, Amman,
+9626 593 3032
Sugar Daddy’s Lebanon,
Qoreitem, Beirut
+9611 787 487
Sugar Daddy’s U.A.E,
The Village, Dubai,
+971 4 344 8204
