Her six-year-old daughter inspired her to start a business

Abu Dhabi: With three masters degrees and a steady job, becoming an entrepreneur was not something 40-year-old Moza Al Mazroui from Abu Dhabi had given much thought to.

She certainly never imagined herself as the owner of Abu Dhabi’s first gluten-free bakery. But that was before her daughter was born.

“I never thought I would own a bakery,” says Moza. “Before I was married, I did not even know what gluten-free was,” she says. [Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye and barley that damages the intestines of people with Celiac disease, people who have an adverse reaction to gluten].

But with the birth of her daughter Maryam in 2009, things changed. By the time she was six months old, Moza was certain there was something wrong with Maryam’s health.

“She couldn’t sleep at night, she had stomach aches and was crying all the time.”

Finally, when Maryam was nine months old, she was diagnosed with gluten allergy. “She could not tolerate even a bite [of a gluten product],” explains Moza.

So Moza began studying gluten-free products in order to attend to her daughter’s needs better. She also started to import gluten-free food, due to lack of its availability in the UAE back then.

And then came the time when Maryam started school. While Maryam always took her specially prepared food with her to school, the problem arose when she had to attend children’s parties or other social gatherings for children where other parents prepared food that posed a problem for Maryam. Due to her allergies, she could not partake in the food at such get-togethers and it was difficult for Moza to explain to her daughter why she could not eat these foods.

Slowly and gently, Moza started to dissuade her daughter from attending gatherings that involved food. But being a social person, excluding her daughter and herself from socialising was not something she was comfortable doing and she began to experience feelings of inadequacy as a mother.

She recalls an incident where she settled on making gluten-free sandwiches for her daughter’s get-togethers. Driving back from the supermarket after she bought gluten-free bread, Moza felt anguished at the thought of coming up with such banal fare when other parents would be bringing a variety of food for children including cakes and muffins. “I began to feel like I wasn’t being a good mother to Maryam,” says Moza. “I couldn’t prepare good food and I had not prepared enough [to attend to her needs].”

Then in 2012, Moza came across the Firin Gluten-Free Bakery franchise in Kuwait. She decided it was time she did something to help Maryam and others with similar problems.

Moza convinced the franchise’s owner into letting her to open the UAE’s first Firin Gluten-Free Bakery.

It was not an easy climb to success, however. “It took us almost two years to open our doors,” she says, with securing funding and getting the licences in place.

In April 2015, the Firin Bakery opened to the public. From pizzas to cakes to cheesecakes, bread and muffins, Moza had them all.

She even opened a coffee shop in her bakery.

“We are different [from the original branch in Kuwait] because we have a coffee shop and a bakery — to attract more people,” she says. Plus, of course, there is the fact she is a coffee, and tea, lover.

Moza has introduced various brewing styles in her coffee shop, hot and cold. “It’s clean coffee, good coffee,” she says. “You can taste it as you smell it.”

Soon, people with other allergies began to approach her with their personalised requests for items. So she started working on dairy-free and vegan recipes.

Each item in her bakery is certified gluten-free. She has striven to eliminate a big problem with gluten-free products — their relatively drier taste, by retaining the moistness in the items she prepares.

She would not have been able to achieve all this, she says, without the unstinting support of her husband, who is not only a regular visitor to the bakery, but a regular host too.

Meanwhile, Moza is buzzing with more plans. Foremost among them is to create an awareness centre where people with celiac or gluten allergies can learn more on the subject.

“The second plan is to be in every emirate.”

Though her daughter inspired her to start the business, Moza is equally passionate about helping others with similar problems and wishes to pay back to the community.

“We were fully supported by our government and I think it is our turn now to return something to this community,” she says.

Her advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs: “Believe in yourself and follow your dreams.”