An entrepreneur from Worsley who started a business from her kitchen table has taken her product to hundreds of Spar and Co-op stores across the country and says she is "ultra proud of the achievement."
The single mother-of-two Shadia Al Hili, launched Cuzena - the first company to introduce Ful Madamous, a traditional Middle Eastern broad bean dish - to the British market in a ready made format, in 2018 but was rocked by the pandemic.
She has now launched a houmous product in a chip and dip format to 300 Spar shops and 100 Co-op stores in Central England - with an intention of increasing this to 1100 stores. The product is also on sale in Spar at Manchester Airport, Bents Garden Centre in Warrington and independent stores in Didsbury.
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The break comes after Shadia's original hopes of getting her Ful Madamous dish in major high street food retailers were dashed by the Covid-19 outbreak. Shadia, mum to daughter Zena, 17, and son, Eilsel, 25, grew up in Salford with her Moroccan and Yemeni parents.
Her late father, Ali Abdulla, introduced her to Ful Madamous when she was five years old. She said "It was my dad's idea of beans on toast. We would have Ful Madamous on bread for breakfast or an early snack. He would make it for us when we were children because he liked it so much. It is a food that gives the human body everything it needs and he saw it as a healthy option to feed his kids'.'
Shadia was 12 years old when she started making Ful Madamous with her dad and when she moved out at 18 she started making it herself using his recipe. After deciding to start making the product professionally Shadia says she got a listing in stores such as Ocado, Booths and Selfridges in March 2020 just before the pandemic hit - with Booths giving her a platform to introduce her range of products for the first time. But then the pandemic hit and all the sampling, because of the new Covid rules, was closed down.
Determined not to lose her business, Shadia decided to get innovative and think how she could still market her products in the time of Covid. She says: "I started looking at a range of dips such as houmous and baba ganoush you can eat on the go with pretzels in some kind of Covid ready packaging - so that is what I launched. They are products that can be put in a food to go sector such as service stations and vending machines."
Cuzena recently entered a global competition with Craft Heinz and was the only British brand to be in the final out of thousands of applicants. Shadia says on the back of the competition she was "catapulted in to the food service arena" and says she now has 15 different products.
Now, the houmous Chip and Dip can be picked up in hundreds of local Co-op and Spar shops and is part of the Spar and Co-op £3.50 meal deal. Shadia says she is "thrilled" with the latest results.
She says: "I am thrilled. The team have worked so hard. It is a huge achievement and I am ultra proud. Every challenge and obstacle we have overcome and we always knew we had this great product. When I first saw Cuzena on the shelf at Spar and Co-op I was elated - and sales are exceeding expectation."
Shadia and her team say they are delighted to have their product at Spar in terminal one at Manchester Airport. She says: "We are so excited to feature in such a busy airport and we now have our sights on getting the products in to more Northern stores. We are a Manchester company and we want our product rolled out in the North and across Manchester - I guess you could say the sky is the limit."
For details of Cuzena products click here and for information about competitions follow @Cuzenakitchen.
