A chance meeting through common friends led Maliha Khan and Zia Ahmad to start their own frozen edible cookie dough company named Doughlicious.
“One day I was craving cookie dough so I did a Google search for it and not a single place in Dubai had it. I decided to make my own and that’s around the time I ran into Zia,” says Maliha.
Zia used to be an accountant and then ventured into the cloud kitchen space, which gave him an insight into the F&B industry. “I handle the finance and operations, while Maliha takes care of the marketing, branding and recipe development,” explains Zia.
Doughlicious uses heat-treated flour and pasteurised eggs to prepare its edible cookie dough, which makes it completely safe for consumption. “We do import a few items like chocolate chips but our packaging and 90 per cent of our ingredients are sourced from UAE-based suppliers,” says Zia.
Spinneys now stocks three flavours of Doughlicious edible cookie dough – brownie, birthday cake and chocolate chip.
The company had its soft launch in February 2020 and started delivery in April. “I still can’t get over it,” says Maliha. “It’s a like a dream,” adds Zia. “We’re being fully supported because we’re a startup. Otherwise we’d have had to spend thousands to be on the shelves of any supermarket.”
Doughlicious plans to create more exciting flavours and will continue to expand. Maliha often runs polls on Instagram to find out what consumers would like to taste next before she gets down to experimenting in her kitchen.
“We are confident about our product and have worked really hard to make it what it is,” she says.