‘Mamma Rania’ is Rania Chakkl, and the hummus she began selling at the Open Air Market last summer is now available at The Chopping Block, Save-On-Foods, Quality Foods and Safeway. Recent demos at some of these stores mean more people have been able to taste her locally made hummus and feel more connected to her.
Rania and her family are one of the Syrian refugee families this community adopted. Rania, her husband Gaby Dayekh and their four children left war-torn Syria and arrived in Powell River in June 2016. The family left everything behind and with the help of this community, they’ve been rebuilding their life.
Rania, who studied theology in university and taught Arabic back in Aleppo, is now a full-time English student at Camber College. Her husband is working and her two youngest children are at Assumption School. One of her older sons is at BCIT and the other is an apprentice carpenter.
Last summer Rania cooked and sold Syrian cuisine at the Farmer’s Market. The menu changed every week but people always asked for her hummus, said business mentor and friend Mar Grantham. “I asked her if she thought it would be a good idea to wholesale it in the grocery stores and she said yes.”
The learning curve was steep for Rania to get her hummus into grocery stores but with Mar by her side she’s had the support she needs.
Mar, who is a volunteer ESL teacher at PR Immigrant Services, was thrilled when asked if she’d like to help Rania.
“I love business. All of it. If I can bring some of my enthusiasm and use some of my knowledge and experience to help her, that would be great,” said Mar who started The Knack and was a partner in River City Coffee years ago.
“The response to Rania’s hummus has been amazing. We sold out of hummus at the market every weekend last year and sold out within a few hours when she did a sampling demo at both Quality Foods and Save-On-Foods this month.”
Rania’s face is printed on the label of her hummus and this has worked well for her. “Lots of people recognized her from the Farmer’s Market and said, ‘Oh good, I’ve been wanting to be able to buy this year round!’” said Mar.
Rania had a lot of learning to do before she could get her product to market. “This is really new to her. The Canadian guidelines for food or selling food are very stringent,” said Mar.
When asked about future plans for marketing her hummus, Mar has advised her mentee to “walk before we run.”
