We were so specialized that the regulators had to learn what our industry is about. And we're thankful because in the past, you used to chase the regulator into making decisions. And now the regulators would chase us up and say, look guys, we want to do this, this and that. Can you help us see what impact it is on your business?
How much money do you have with this? How it's going to impact that business and contribute to the vast image to the macro economy at large and how do we move on forward with achieving collectively Vision 2030? Initiating direct trade and making it work at a small or medium-sized scale is hard. Especially ahead of harvest.
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You can also book a meeting with Matthew and he'll walk you through requesting samples, the order process, pooled orders, QC and shipping once coffees are ready. Supporting our advertisers is a great way to support our mission at Mappa Forward to build responsible businesses with responsible pricing models. Check the show notes for details and explore Arcana Coffee Marketplace today. Welcome to the Mappa Forward Middle East podcast friends.
I'm your host Lee Safar and this is episode two of a five-part series with Osamal Awam from the Roasting House based in the reality of Saudi Arabia. We are talking about the challenges of running a business in the Middle East and in this second episode of the series, we're going to talk about how Osamal builds Roasting House to be the business that it is today. So Osamal, do you help people understand why we're talking about this? Can you help explain to people what the business of Roasting House is?
Okay, so the Roasting House started with a very small shop, but a very big dream and that big dream is to elevate coffee standards, spread specialty coffee, even before choosing the name Roasting House, myself and my business partners, we put a vision and mission and that is to spread specialty coffee culture in an environment where it feels safe to ask questions. And sometimes people feel embarrassed asking, how do I make this? How do I grow coffee? How do I grow better coffees?
And I say safe, there's no stupid question when it comes to coffee and there's no coffee release that will say no, it's not right. Coffee is right as long as you're enjoying it. So I wanted to create this space where people can come ask questions, enjoy and feel happy about their coffee experience. So when I first opened the doors, it was not trying to sell coffee, but to try to create sales soldiers behind this new business.
Everybody that came into the store, I explained myself to my business partner who were at the time, when in our digital shop, essentially, telling them what coffee is about, where this coffee comes from, the story and waiting for that moment when they first tried the coffee. Because a lot of the people that we were serving coffee to were accustomed to drinking brewed coffee or black coffee, but from commercial shops or from coffee experiences that they have come across traveling or they themselves tried coffee that is different, essentially, from a friend who's driving abroad or they ordered online. So it was about providing better coffee for people who sort it. And it was about creating those sales soldiers to go out of our store and sell the idea to their friends and family as well.
And so we brewed coffee for almost everybody who came in. And within, I would say, days or probably weeks or probably days, we had lines outside our very small shop, because word of mouth spread so easily and people who are really thirsty for better quality coffee. People were not getting it at the time, were not getting quality coffee. They get the idea that they need better quality coffee, but it was not widely present.
And I'm humbled to start at the same time as our fellow coffee hosters started. So Lele, we met also some of the UAE startups for specialty coffee at the time, who also shared the vision. And I would say it was the fire that started the roasting machine, essentially, at the time. And then I would meet weekly or bi-weekly or we'd talk daily about, let's get clean coffee from this, let's get clean coffee from that store.
Come on up, exciting. Look, did you meet this guy? He has the same issue that we have. We're talking on Twitter to someone in a remote village outside.
And they had the same issues that we had, which is roasting and brewing. And it was all peaky stuff. Wow. And about an exchanging ideas and talking about espresso shots and latte art and...
Be Arabic coffee geek. It was, yeah, it was... All right. It was a lot sad, but it was all good, all right.
It was segregated, essentially. And we would meet at a lot of house, who bless his heart, opened up his house for us to come and bring other roasters, airport go roasters, or... I remember I had a roaster called Nesco, which I got from the States, and it was a cylindrical roaster. And why he had made, manufactured his own F roasting machine.
I've heard about this. Is this a vacuum cleaner? Of course, it was manufactured out of vacuum cleaners. So he took a vacuum and just turned it into an air roaster, which I think he still has, and even to have the loveliest coffee ever out of this, the roasting machine.
And we would gather, everybody would bring their green beans, and we would call it online, and we would roast... Wow. ...ace and do cold brews. And it was, and still is, a community that has the best interest for coffee at heart here in the region.
Candela. And I'm less than Candela to say that we started this, and it was not something that is important. We started it because we spoke the coffee lingo, but also spoke the Arabic coffee lingo as well, and Arabic language, and understood what the market wanted. And maybe sometimes the market didn't know what it wanted, but we helped direct that market to reach where it is at today, which is better coffee standards and enablement for sure.
I say enablement because K-State Vision 2030 is all about, enablement is all about catching the wave and enabling both male and female to go into industries professionally, it's about opportunities, it's about dreaming. And when you dream, it's not at all impossible to achieve your dreams, because this is the land of dreams right now that we're living in. Yeah, people need to also remember that this was happening at a time where the culture around you was experiencing immeasurable shifting. Sure.
Everything was shifting, and what I find really fascinating about that is that as Saudi was opening up at the time, you guys were pioneering, well, how do we build these businesses? But also, how do we find that balance between bringing what's going on outside of here into harmony with Saudi coffee? Yes, yeah, absolutely. Which is a very delicate dance to do, no?
Absolutely, especially when you have regulators trying to also regulate an industry that existed in the past, but under completely different terms. When you go to traditional roasters, you see them selling spices, sweets, nuts, everything else soaked, maybe traditionally made so. Everything else, but we were plenty as well. But we were so specialized that the regulators had to learn what our industry is about.
And we're thankful because in the past, you used to chase the regulator into making decisions. And now, regulators would chase us up and say, look, guys, we want to do this and that. Can you help us see what impact it is on your business? How it's going to enable your businesses, how it's going to impact that business, and contribute to the vast image, to the macro economy at large, and how do we move on forward with achieving collectively Vision 2030?
And this is why we're blessed to create things like the Gajwa Association of Saudi Arabia, the National Committee for Coffee and Losters in Saudi Arabia, where we also get to talk and learn about the challenges the industry is facing, and then liaise with the decision makers to further enable this industry to grow. And when I say enabling it to grow, I mean, professional training, I mean, employment, I mean, employee rights and opportunities, I mean, licensing, I mean, FDA, a food and drug authority regulation with storage, where housing logistics, I mean, logistics with transport, I mean, customs and regulations. So this entire ecosystem contributes, the FMB industry in Saudi Arabia contributes to the National Economy, through point of sale transactions, with values exceeding 2 billion Saudi Arabia's per week. Martial law.
2 billion. On 500 million USD per week, is spent on food and beverage in Saudi Arabia, on point of sale a lot. So this doesn't include cash as well. So this is an industry that is contributing to the National Economy of Saudi Arabia.
40 million people, 40 million Saudis in Saudi Arabia, right? Plus tourism. Yeah, more than 65% of the 40 million is between the ages of 18 to 34. Wow.
Very young. So it's a young economy? It is a young economy, yes. Which is very juxtaposed to what's happening in most developed countries around the world, which have aging economies, which adds to why Saudi is so exciting at the moment, right?
It's going to be absolutely, absolutely. So tell me, when you guys are doing what you're doing, as you're establishing this industry, how much of a role does your previous life have on helping you figure this out? Speaking as an employee. Business development and all of that.
Like I imagine, because typically what happens, right? Somebody's a coffee roaster for somebody else and they say, I can do this better than the person I'm working for. I'm just going to go and open a business. That's not what you did.
What you had was that you had business experience, you had business development experience, you had a law experience. And a lot of people are listening to this thinking, I want to be at Osama Al-Lawan. So. We're talking about Osama Al-Lawan.
Like a leak. So what I want to help people understand is the role that your education and your previous experience played in you understanding the need for market research. It sounds like there was a lot of that. The understanding for creating relationships and things like that.
Would you mind speaking to that a little bit? Of course. In my studies, I chose specific modules at university which were targeted at helping me understand how to open a business that was called Ozzie's Cafe. Ozzie was a nickname that I grew up with in the UK since.
You had the nickname Ozzie? Yes, yes. Oh, as an Ozzie myself. Yeah.
I'm happy with that. We'll take that. You can be an honorary other kind of Ozzie. Oh, the S-Y, so not all WZ.
Malish, we'll close one eye and we'll just pretend it's the same thing. No IP infringement on Ozzie's work. And Ozzie would be short for Osama. And I wanted to open a cafe because I was roasting coffee at the time and it was something that I wanted to.
It was something fun and I wanted to do something at university that I enjoyed. I didn't enjoy crunching numbers. I didn't enjoy a lot of the things that were outside the scope of my passion. My passion is business.
It's maybe regulations law, understanding how things operate, understanding how regulations sort of govern relationships. But it was not necessarily about financing or excel sheets and big data analytics. But I had to learn those. And in order for me to understand how to learn those, I chose something that I loved, which is coffee.
And I said, okay, let me do a business, fictional business and that fictional business. Like a thesis. And that fictional business is Ozzie's Cafe. Let me learn how I can open this cafe and operate it well.
So I bought books online about coffee, the things I learned as a Starbucks, but how I set up a cafe like Coffee Republic. I remember there's a story by a brother and a sister in the UK who opened the chain of business called Coffee Republic. I think her name was Sahar, Bob and Sahar, Bobby, and Sahar, Bob and Sahar from Coffee Republic. They had a really nice story.
Yeah, great. And their story was that they didn't like the sandwiches they got from cafes and they bought tickets from, like train tickets from zones one to six, which run through the entire east to west of London. And they stopped at every station and tried the sandwiches. Oh, wow.
The shops. And they wanted to create a coffee shop where people get good coffee but not sandwiches at the same time. And that's how they started Coffee Republic, which was a successful chain at the time. So I started reading books and then I was, okay, yeah, I can do something fun about this.
I chose models that are how to do venture financing, how to do business plans. And in those, I also, I remember vividly the financing matrix that I had which was a table where I would put options for financing friends and family, venture captains, angel investors, bangles, et cetera. Well, how? And I remember that the end score would be with friends and family who understood what I wanted to do, but also contributed to the business with their brains, essentially.
Now, it's somewhat of a CFA, it was somewhat with the really known expertise in finance and management of businesses from a financial perspective. And my business partner is a pharmacist. So you know what the food and drug and family relations are, the better way to move. Nice.
So this is how I chose my business. Folks, take a note of what you just heard. So I took the skill set that I learned at university, how to finance. And I remember one of my what theses in one of the models and how I got an A-style in this was to run this financing model and then do a test in the class where I separated the class into two groups.
And I had two types of coffee. The only me knew what to talk about, these two types of coffee art. One was a fresh roast with aromas of chocolate and nuts and berries and really nice fresh rolls, ground as well. And the other one was stale coffee that I had from three or four months or even more.
Coffee that I blended together, ground, I let it be like a sort of astringent and old and really bad smelling. And I gave these two bags to the different types of different groups. And each one I had told them that this is a coffee with aromas of chocolate and berries and nuts. And everybody agreed.
The two groups agreed that this smells really good. And I wanted to show the class at the end. I made them switch the coffee bags. And they again agreed that these two coffee options are really great, they smell fantastic.
We smell the same coffee. This was in 2007, maybe 2008. Wow. And at the end, I told them the truth.
Look, guys, what I gave you were two different coffee options. But I directed your thinking into believing that these coffee options are great by showing you a brand, which was Ozzy's Cafe, by showing you a matrix that was sophisticated in some way, and by showing you a nice packaged coffee with nice details and driving your thinking to believe that this is good coffee. And this is the power that you can create from a business and how you should wisely use this power in an ethical manner where you create a story, you create a business and you create something that you believe in and that you enjoy yourself that you can share with the rest of the world. And this is how it got started.
Those things that you experience in that degree, like examples like that, do they inform your thinking now as an owner? Yes, of course, of course. So when I went, after I started working for the Central Bank, they, working for somebody else in a corporate network, taught me a lot of the things that I needed to know about the corporate world, which is organization, workshop, time, management, deadlines, separation of duties, separation of duties, and of course, how employees live their lives. Wow, that's actually a great one.
That's a great one. Because employees are, and I'm still an employee, I'm employed by most of the fact that I own the business, but I'm here nine to five, or I'm here most of my time. So I'm still an employee, but I'm not the same as people that I see outside my window. Now, who are in offices nine to five if they're laid from this?
How can I make their lives better by brewing back to time at a faster time, keeping it warm, not in months that don't change the impact of flavour, continuously changing, not taking a lot of space. All of the things that I want to direct at people who live a life different than mine, and I need to learn. I definitely continue to learn from this with everything that I face every day. I love it.
We've talked about folks, all the really great things that have built Roasting House. Now we're going to move towards, in the next episode, a more regional perspective on this discussion, and we're going to talk about the challenges of building businesses in the Middle East and the Middle East ecosystem. So join us for the next episode. Peace, love and pain about our have an amazing rest of your day.
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