Interview with Ahmed Hawas, CEO at The Oven Market

Given the growing market of home cook chefs, we have established a new three way high tech platform to connect both home food lovers and the top home cook chefs. TOM will be focusing on introducing new initiative to the region and recognize our home cookers allowing them to increase their income while staying at home. Including food, deserts, pastries and all what foodies crave for.

What is your business name?

The Oven Market

Which industry does your business belong to?

Food Delivery Services

What is your business type?

Services

How old is your business?

Less than a year

Who are your customers?

Both B2B and B2C

How did you initially come up with the idea or concept for the business?

Dubai is a hub of expats and getting the genuine cuisine options that are purely cooked by the native are barely available. However, there are abundance experiential dinning venues but that is not day-to-day solution and nor does it have the richness of inherited flavor. Alongside all these elements, people associate with business models that has a bigger purpose - our purpose is to help passionate chefs (even those who adopted this interest as recently as during the lockdown) to convert their passion for cooking to commercial and believe in the dream of having their own brand through our focused guidance on brand building, quality assurance and much more.
This is the story of TOM and the key ingredient we follow each day to make a difference, even if that is of a significant size.

Tell us about some of the major turning points in the history of your business.

TOM is a 3 way high-tech platform (app for Chefs, app for Consumers and app for Riders) all created without any inclusion of external investment to eliminate any possibility of inviting distraction. It was launched in mid-Nov 2020 and one of the chef specializing in baking cookies followed our guide, maintained persistence and a month ago through the support and resilience, she opened her first ever bakery shop in prestige location of Dubai. This is an immense milestone, achieved in such a short time. TOM is here to give back to the community in various ways and we have made it happen by being true to our core purpose.

What made you choose Dubai as a location to setup your business?

Cloud Kitchens or Dark Kitchens are picking up rapidly in Dubai when compared to rest of the Emirates. Also, having other businesses active in Dubai contributed towards growing the group portfolio. Nonetheless, Dubai has a reputation of disrupting the business modules for example, Careem, Souq.com, JadoPado, Zomato, etc. are all benchmarked in Dubai due to the governmental support and the speed at which decisions are taken in this opportunity filled city.

Finally, what sets your business apart from the competition?

Everything we do has customer at the core, where our employees and chefs being the first customers. The key focus that we have across most of the business under our belt is to avoid being a 'me too' and that is exactly what gave birth to TOM. We are not an usual aggregator serving huge volume that is pre-processed or pre-prepared followed by heat touchup to make it ready for consumption. All the ingredients used in TOM are freshly chopped, added, and cooked for the individual customer which is why our chefs are either scheduled (taking orders for the coming day) or instant with a limited capacity for cooking daily cuisines enabling the society they live in to know about their existence and grow loyalty base.

Can you name some of your clients?

We have strict policy towards user data policy. However, TOM Chefs can be seen on the app where Caramelize is one of the many participants in serving consumers and setting a milestone of opening their own bakery from the success achieved at TOM.

What service(s) or product(s) do you offer/manufacture?

TOM carries cuisines of 14 countries that includes a rich combination of food, snacks, bakery, desserts, beverages and much more. Each of these are a representation of TOM Chefs' stories allowing people to bite a piece of journey.

What are the key strengths of your products/services?

Authentic cuisine made from the native with ingredients and recipe inherited from long preserved family trials. That's why, same food cooked in different houses has a different taste due to the method practiced and passed from generations. This disrupts the market conventions and positions TOM on a refreshingly new level while enabling people to join as TOM Chefs (post screening tests) to earn extra income in legal way and also to create their own brand empowering entrepreneurship mindset.

Are there any exclusive products/services that you offer (not offered anywhere else in Dubai)?

TOM is currently available in Dubai only. We are aiming to cover UAE in a gradual manner. In a coming month, it will also be launched in Stockholm, Sweden.

Can you share some of your products and pricing?

Products are not off the shelf, so the pricing varies amongst chefs, preparation time and much more. You may explore TOM app for the quality governance and options.

Editor note: You can find more information about The Oven Market on HiDubai by visiting their claimed business page from here.