By Anand Holla
Name: Abouzar Jamshedi
Location: Al Jamal Sweet Centre, Souq Waqif
Nationality: Iranian
What do you sell?
We sell a whole range of sweets and dry fruits; from packaged chocolates and candies to nuts from various countries. For the past 21 years, our shop has been known for the wide variety we stock.
What are your shop’s specialties?
We have two specialties that set us apart — authentic Qatari rahash (a traditional sweet made from sesame seeds’ paste) and Qatari halwa. We get them made, hot and fresh every day, at a shop here in Souq, and in different flavours like saffron and chocolate.
Our customers tell us that no other shop in Doha manages to get this taste that we do with our rahash and halwa. We sell a lot of Omani halwa, Bahraini halwa and Iranian sweets, too.
Where do you source your goods from?
About 80 per cent of the sweets we have, we make here. Every day, we make 50 kgs of rahash and 50 kgs of each type of halwa, and by night, we would have sold them all out. We import the rest of our sweets, and also dry fruits, from Iran, India, UAE and Bahrain.
Do you face any kind of problems running this shop?
None whatsoever.
Who are your customers?
Our customers are mostly Arabs, and in that, mostly Qataris. However, tourists from the Arab region frequent us as they can easily relate to all these sweets.
What is the best thing about Souq Waqif?
It’s a great melting pot where all kinds of customers from all over the city and the world come to shop, eat and roam about.
If it wasn’t for this job, what would you have been doing?
I love this job. If I ever have to leave this shop, I would set up a similar shop elsewhere.
Abouzar Jamshedi in the shop.