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Move over Willy Wonka and Charlie …. Sonya Janahi is the new chocolate factory kingpin, writes Mai Al Khatib-Camille.
The entrepreneur is living the dream of every child on the island by owning the kingdom’s first chocolate factory and producing variations of the tasty treats to distribute around the region and has global aspirations.
The mother-of-two is the queen of éclairs with a sweet tooth and a passion for business. Her crush on chocolates as a child has developed into a full grown love affair and a golden opportunity as she was determined to improve the taste and flavour of the products on offer in her home country.
The former banker from Sanad and owner of a successful property investment company, said: “I love chocolates, especially the dark variety. When I eat chocolate, I love the smell of it even before the actual taste. And, when I do taste it, I want it to be wax-free and fresh.
“In the past you could barely smell the chocolate available in Bahrain and it appeared to contain more cocoa butter than anything-else.
“That drove me to hunt for good chocolates during my travels. I found myself shopping for the treats more than buying clothing and returning to Bahrain with bags full of the stuff! I would pick and choose the best-of-the-best and bring it home!
“That’s when I thought, why can’t I make it here? I said to myself, enough of focusing on my crazy real estate developments that I always do in my SJ Investment Company. I wanted something fun, relaxing and healthy, and yes, you can make chocolates healthy.
“We do not add preservatives or additives and we promote dark chocolate, which is one of the biggest sources of antioxidants and has a number of nutritious benefits.”
Aside from satisfying her own cravings, Sonya was determined to develop the art of chocolate-making in Bahrain. For more than a year she studied and conducted research on bringing her concept to life. She went through a strenuous screening process, taste-testing different chocolate and analysing raw cacao from different parts of the world.
Sonya focused on flavours, recipes, balancing the percentage of chocolates with nuts and fruits, as well as the presentation of each melt-in-your-mouth morsel. She took into consideration how big or small to make a chocolate bar, how much nut to put into one bite and how to make each chocolate special and sought-after.
Sonya, who deemed the research as a ‘happy process’, said: “We ate an endless amount of chocolate before deciding on the final cacao to use to make our delicacies. We are talking about hundreds of chocolates from different plantations and companies.
“We then decided on using raw chocolate from Belgium. However, we still conduct research today, test other groups and work with our team in Belgium to develop chocolate even further.
“Now, we have reached a stage where we can tell if it’s our chocolate simply by the smell of it!”
In 2007, Maya La Chocolaterie (MLC), a bespoke chocolate bar concept, was born with the first café-style outlet opening its doors to customers in Seef Mall.
She called her sweet success Maya as a tribute to the first tribe to consume cacao as a beverage. The Mayans named it ‘the drink of the gods’ and used the seeds as currency.
Sonya said: “My aim was to create an international brand that serves the finest chocolates produced in Bahrain.”
Maya’s decadent desserts and chocolate craze began to take Saudi Arabia and Kuwait by storm, opening three chocolate bar cafés in Riyadh and one in Jeddah, as well as one in Kuwait.
The pastries, chocolates and cakes, which at first were being churned and baked in MLC’s kitchen in Umm Al Hassam, began to fly off the shelves faster than they could be made. The demand was so great that Sonya decided it was high time to open a factory, or a sister company.
She said: “It came as a natural progression where we had to create a fully functional kitchen and chocolate production unit to meet the demand of Maya La Chocolaterie and its growing franchises. Thus, in 2008, Maya Delices was born as a chocolate factory, patisserie and catering kitchen.”
Maya Delices started off in a cosy facility in Um Al Hassam before moving to its large state-of-the-art operating base and factory in Riffa. Today, there are 30 members of staff working endlessly to create a vast variety of chocolates, from pralines, truffles, bars, and much more, from scratch.
Customers can now walk into its pink and white chocolate boutique to place an order for beautifully-designed cakes, scrumptious snacks and chocolates.
Maya Delices combines a full patisserie that creates fresh desserts and cakes for all occasions along with a fully functional catering kitchen that cooks up savoury sandwiches, canapés, nibbles and more for banquets and events.
The factory produces more than 100 types of chocolate, such as hazelnut, peppercorn, chocolate-covered pretzels, almonds and even a few spicy sweets. They annually ship around 30 tonnes of chocolates – from chocolate bars, pralines, moulded chocolates, enrobed nuts, lollipops, hot chocolate and bonbons – to clients and corporations all over the Middle East.
The business is very much a family affair. Her daughters Rose, 23, who studies in London School of Economics and Political Science, and Rona, 18, who attends the US University of California, Berkeley, also help with the recipe process. Sonya said: “My daughters and I have worked together over the years and they have advised me on different flavours. Whenever they try a new food or something where they live, they call me and send me pictures saying I should try this! I’m proud of them.”
Today, Maya Delices as a patisserie has been franchised to neighbouring Saudi Arabia and will be opening in Riyadh in the near future. It will only be offering the signature pastries of Maya Delices, and catering services. Chocolate fans will still have to travel over the Saudi Causeway for supplies from the factory or arrange for goodies to be shipped over, boosting both Bahrain’s tourism and trade sectors. Sweet!
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 1964 children’s book by British author Roald Dahl. The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka and has twice been a box office movie hit.
Chief Reporter MaiAl Khatib-Camille joined Assistant Editor Nawaar Farooq on a mission to unwrapthe secrets of Bahrain’s only chocolate factory in Riffa
Our day started offfine and dandy, thinking we were heading for a fabulous tour of the facility.But we were in for an exciting treat, a chance to create (and devour) our ownchocolates … under the supervision of professional chocolatiers.
After we were suitedand booted in our hair caps, disposable shoe sleeves, face masks, gloves andaprons, we headed onto the chilly factory floor. We squeezed gooey chocolate sauce into moulds afterfilling them with nuts and fruits and then put star and heart-shaped cookies inan ‘enrobing machine’ to be smothered in chocolate.
After placing all thecookies on a conveyer belt, we waited at the end for our results to appear.Needless to say, not many of our amateur efforts made it onto the cookiesheets, meaning we could eat the samples.
With chocolate-coveredpretzels in our mouths, we finished off the moulds and left them to cool, witha few chocolate breaks in between to keep our energy levels high after a hardday’s work.
Then we were escortedto the patisserie section to decorate our own green velvet cakes. Nawaar and Imade beautiful roses together and even prepared an ‘I heart GulfWeekly’cake for our newspaper family. It was a day that we will never forget.
