At a food carnival earlier this year, one hamburger stand in particular attracted long queues, drawing customers away from Dubai’s more established fast-food joints.
One of the draws, perhaps, was that the food at She Burger was served up by a group of young Emirati women.
“It was my friends taking orders, they are all local,” says Emirati Shaikha Eissa, 26, the young businesswoman and cook behind She Burger. “You don’t see locals working [at a burger stand], you know. They just hide and let everyone else do the work so I wanted to show them it’s fine to work. They enjoyed themselves a lot.”
Ms Eissa has a knack for catching the public’s attention. Her main method of marketing her business has so far been via social media – Facebook, Twitter and, most importantly, Instagram, where she has more than 25,000 followers.
The Dubai native has been an avid cook since she was 12 and always wanted to run her own company. She studied business management at the American University in Dubai and it was after graduating in 2010 that she got serious about burgers.
One evening a couple of years ago, her older brother, Faisal, and his friends turned up and asked her to cook for them. She made burgers. Every time they came back they asked for more, so she started experimenting with various fillings and flavours.
“In Dubai, you don’t have many different types of flavours – it’s just lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise. You couldn’t get a buffalo burger with buffalo sauce,” she explains. “I wanted to do something different with the burgers, have a lot of different flavours.”
The She Burger branding comes partly from her gender and from the letters “Sh” and “E” at the start of her first and second names.
A look at menu shows that along with the classic cheeseburger and chicken burger options, you can order a Santa Fe burger with spicy mayonnaise; a Sloppy Joe burger with chilli beef, onion rings, jalapeños, cheese and onions; and a Cuban burger – a “biggy munch” with shredded potatoes, a secret red sauce, mayonnaise, cheese and onions. She has also branched into hot dogs and the Shedog comes with cheddar cheese, caramelised onions and jalapeño.
Her brother and his friends persuaded her to post pictures of her creations on Instagram, and the enthusiasm they generated persuaded her to launch her delivery business a year ago.
She upgraded the kitchen in her home in Mirdif at a cost of Dh250,000 to meet the required industry standards and now employs nine Filipino cooks. She reckons she makes about 5,000 sliders – or mini-burgers – a week. The minimum delivery order is 10 burgers and she often receives individual requests for as many as 50 or 80.
Her Instagram fame has also brought other opportunities. She has been asked to appear on TV cooking shows (“I’ve always wanted to be famous,” she admits) and she has been offered venues to establish a restaurant.
So far, she has turned these down as she wants to ensure she picks the perfect location for her venture (she favours Jumeirah in Dubai) and fund it herself with profits from the burgers. She hopes to open her own restaurant within a year.
“I’ve always wanted to open a restaurant; that’s what I dream of doing,” she says. “I was thinking of a drive-through. I think it’s perfect.”
She also hopes in time to follow the lead of other UAE-based start-ups including Just Falafel, Chez Sushi and Cafe2go, and franchise the business.
“Usually we always get burger brands from outside – from California, from New York,” she says. “So I wanted to be different – to have a local brand and franchise it in the Middle East and beyond.”
Instagram success is all very well, but the downside of social media – how nasty people can be – is well documented. Ms Eissa says she ignores unpleasant comments but takes on board valid complaints from customers as she strives to improve her business. At one popup stand, she underestimated the demand for her burgers and hired too few servers. This resulted in a queue of impatient, hungry people.
Her resolve is not to give up.
“At the beginning there were complaints from some people,” she recalls. “But you learn from your mistakes.”
She has also discovered a number of copycat businesses.
She shrugs this off, saying she has a starter’s advantage.
“I’m not worried,” she adds.
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