From working in a restaurant, taking wheels with a food truck to finishing orders from your home kitchen, today, there are so many ways to turn your food business into a successful one...
Wondering what it’s like to be a Food Entrepreneur?
Meet Mahwish Aziz, one of ICCA Dubais' alumni who left her job asa successful Graphic Designer to become a full-time baker and an entrepreneur.Armed with an internationally accredited qualification in The Culinary Arts -Baking & Patisserie from ICCA Dubai, she has managed to do it all in the world of sugar & butter.
Baking intrigued Mahwish since the age of 11. She baked her first cake out of a ready-to-mix cake box, which ignited her passion for baking, and went on to grow to a small-scale home-based baking business. She continued her love for baking even while she was at her job.
Although the flair to bake came to her naturally but the growing list of clients made Mahwish feel the need to get professionally trained to hone her cake decorating skills. She realized further that baking is what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. This helped her decide to quit her job and join ICCA Dubai to pursue the Sugarcraft program. It also paved way for her to do both cookery and patisserie programs.
After all her professional training, orders started piling in,which was a lot to cope up in the confines of her home kitchen. That is when her father suggested opening up a professional bakery with a dedicated production kitchen.
And before she could even think, Sugaries was born. For Mahwish,Sugaries is much more than a patisserie shop. It is a dream that she has had since her childhood. She has managed to put together her dream with her hardwork and parents’ support. When it came to naming her business, Mahwish had no second thoughts. She had always been fond of the name ‘Sugaries’, and had designed her logo at the age of seventeen.
When her father suggested she open her startup, Mahwish did not feel she was ready for such a humongous challenge. However, everything went well while setting up, and now she has a fully-fledged production kitchen for the shop. She also caters, takes party orders, and does much more with her baking skills.
The journey of a food entrepreneur does not come by easy. Aboutthe hardships, Mahwish says, “Running a bakery is not all about beautiful pinkaprons and cute cupcakes. It is obviously a trillion times challenging to haveyour shop, in comparison to baking from home. When you run a shop, you dependon your staff where you cannot be sure whether they can deliver the same qualityas you do, even though they are trained for it. You have to be alert abouteverything going on in the shop especially when you are traveling even if it’sfor a day. We deal with the usual day-to-day problems that any business wouldcome across or more since we are dealing with food here. It is food industryafter all and it’s not that easy, and it comes with its own sets of challengesand troubles”.
Dealing with challenges like this in the business is exactly where she feels her education from ICCA Dubai has helped her. “When you are learning from a bunch of talented chefs who have different approaches towards the industry and food, it is a great experience for the learner. You learn different ways to deal with the various aspects of the industry and moreover,it is after coming to ICCA that I realized how much potential I have than I ever had thought. I was surprised and extremely emotional when I was announced as the Chef of the Batch. I mean that gives you a lot more confidence to go out and get something done”, she added.
After living her passion and thoroughly enjoying the experience,she strongly believes that having a focused mindset, knowing what you’re getting into, and being determined to learn more has helped her achieve a lot in her culinary career.
To sum it all up, she says, “It is a wonderful career but be ready to take the critic and be mindful of the fact that if you made a great cake today it could collapse the next day. Just take that with a pinch of salt”.
Do you have a passion for food? Then look no further, ICCA Dubai is your home ground to jump start your passion...
Driven by Innovation and Striving for Excellence, The ICCA is all about leadership and is more than just a school.
This is Where Life Happens...
From working in a restaurant, taking wheels with a food truck to finishing orders from your home kitchen, today, there are so many ways to turn your food business into a successful one...
Wondering what it’s like to be a Food Entrepreneur?
Meet Mahwish Aziz, one of ICCA Dubais' alumni who left her job asa successful Graphic Designer to become a full-time baker and an entrepreneur.Armed with an internationally accredited qualification in The Culinary Arts -Baking & Patisserie from ICCA Dubai, she has managed to do it all in the world of sugar & butter.
Baking intrigued Mahwish since the age of 11. She baked her first cake out of a ready-to-mix cake box, which ignited her passion for baking, and went on to grow to a small-scale home-based baking business. She continued her love for baking even while she was at her job.
Although the flair to bake came to her naturally but the growing list of clients made Mahwish feel the need to get professionally trained to hone her cake decorating skills. She realized further that baking is what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. This helped her decide to quit her job and join ICCA Dubai to pursue the Sugarcraft program. It also paved way for her to do both cookery and patisserie programs.
After all her professional training, orders started piling in,which was a lot to cope up in the confines of her home kitchen. That is when her father suggested opening up a professional bakery with a dedicated production kitchen.
And before she could even think, Sugaries was born. For Mahwish,Sugaries is much more than a patisserie shop. It is a dream that she has had since her childhood. She has managed to put together her dream with her hardwork and parents’ support. When it came to naming her business, Mahwish had no second thoughts. She had always been fond of the name ‘Sugaries’, and had designed her logo at the age of seventeen.
When her father suggested she open her startup, Mahwish did not feel she was ready for such a humongous challenge. However, everything went well while setting up, and now she has a fully-fledged production kitchen for the shop. She also caters, takes party orders, and does much more with her baking skills.
The journey of a food entrepreneur does not come by easy. Aboutthe hardships, Mahwish says, “Running a bakery is not all about beautiful pinkaprons and cute cupcakes. It is obviously a trillion times challenging to haveyour shop, in comparison to baking from home. When you run a shop, you dependon your staff where you cannot be sure whether they can deliver the same qualityas you do, even though they are trained for it. You have to be alert abouteverything going on in the shop especially when you are traveling even if it’sfor a day. We deal with the usual day-to-day problems that any business wouldcome across or more since we are dealing with food here. It is food industryafter all and it’s not that easy, and it comes with its own sets of challengesand troubles”.
Dealing with challenges like this in the business is exactly where she feels her education from ICCA Dubai has helped her. “When you are learning from a bunch of talented chefs who have different approaches towards the industry and food, it is a great experience for the learner. You learn different ways to deal with the various aspects of the industry and moreover,it is after coming to ICCA that I realized how much potential I have than I ever had thought. I was surprised and extremely emotional when I was announced as the Chef of the Batch. I mean that gives you a lot more confidence to go out and get something done”, she added.
After living her passion and thoroughly enjoying the experience,she strongly believes that having a focused mindset, knowing what you’re getting into, and being determined to learn more has helped her achieve a lot in her culinary career.
To sum it all up, she says, “It is a wonderful career but be ready to take the critic and be mindful of the fact that if you made a great cake today it could collapse the next day. Just take that with a pinch of salt”.
Do you have a passion for food? Then look no further, ICCA Dubai is your home ground to jump start your passion...
Driven by Innovation and Striving for Excellence, The ICCA is all about leadership and is more than just a school.
This is Where Life Happens...