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Finding peace through chocolate
00:23:45
The family that lost its chocolate business in Syria’s war but rebuilt it in Canada
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- [00:00]
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- [01:04]
Rahul Tandon
Hello, I'm Rahul Tandon and welcome to meet the founders from Business Daily on the BBC World Service. This is where we speak to innovators around the world about the ideas, risks and realities of starting a business. Today. I'm talking to a man whose family chocolate business, founded by his father in Syria in the 1980s, was destroyed by the civil war.
- [01:27]
Tariq Haddad
My father was counting down to death, my siblings were out of schools. Everyone was living in a depression that I really felt that they were not going to come out of it.
- [01:34]
Rahul Tandon
And yet he bounced back, resettling in Canada and relaunching the business there.
- [01:39]
Tariq Haddad
You know, chocolate that doesn't know language, doesn't know culture, doesn't know background, doesn't know faith. It's very universal. It's like music. Everyone understands it. They might taste it differently, they might have different preferences.
- [01:50]
Rahul Tandon
That Tarek Haddad, a survivor and the CEO of Peace by Chocolate here on Business daily from the BBC. Let's take you back to 1986, because that was when Tarek's father, Issam started his chocolate business in Damascus. Isam was a medical engineering graduate. And chocolate making, well, initially it was just a hobby. He named his business Haddad Chocolate. Hisan Tarek takes up the story.
- [02:19]
Tariq Haddad
My family did not have a history in entrepreneurship. Most of my family members there either doctors, judges, engineers, dentists. No one really chose entrepreneurship as a path for their life. And even my dad, he actually stumbled upon entrepreneurship. It was not something that he wanted to do when he was born. So it's quite extraordinary what my father and my family had to go through, really, to establish a chocolate business in Damascus in 1986, where the product was not very popular. No one really was asking for chocolate at the that time. And it happened when my father graduated as an engineer. And then a week after that graduation, he went to my cousin's wedding with my grandmother. And he was looking around and they danced, they ate, they did all the fun stuff. And then my father saw, you know, they were serving chocolate on beautiful Damascene plates that was like, even too pretty to eat. So he looked in everyone's eyes and then he said, I found it. My grandmother said, what did you find? He said, mom, I'm going to make chocolate, because chocolate makes everyone happy. No one eats chocolate will ever be sad. And then my grandmother looked him in the eye and she said, esam, you even don't know how to make two fried eggs in the kitchen. You know that, right? So he was known to be a terrible cook, but then he turned out to be one of the best chocolate beers in the region.
- [03:34]
Rahul Tandon
Wow, what a great story that is of somebody following also their dreams when they saw something they loved and thought could change people's lives. Tell me what it was like growing up. That would be my dream if my parents would have had a chocolate business.
- [03:49]
Tariq Haddad
Yeah, actually, you will like it first, but then you will get sick of it because you will be the official taste tester in the house. Whenever my dad was creating a new batch or a new flavor or sending a new shipment overseas, which he was exporting technically everywhere across Europe and the Middle East. It was really great, you know, to have that first taste and try to explain it to people, but it is quite difficult to do it. You know, the beauty about chocolate, overall, it is like me, music, it's very universal. And it became that way more and more, actually, as my father was expanding his factory and introducing a lot of delicious new flavors.
- [04:24]
Rahul Tandon
So the war did break out, the Civil War, in March 2011. So how old were you then and how was the business doing?
- [04:32]
Tariq Haddad
What were you doing when the war broke out? I was 19 years old. 2011. Actually, the war started in 2012. Revolution started in 2011. Peaceful revolution. The protests all across the country, people were. Were risking everything just to voice their freedoms and try to ask for better human rights across the country. And that was actually something that's very noble that people were fighting for at that time. So I'm just going to take you a step back before we go into the war because this is very important. You know, the background of the way we were living as a family it was astonishing. My grandfather and my grandmother, they insisted that the entire family would live in one building. So my grandmother and my grandfather were on the first floor, we were on the second floor. My uncles were on the third floor, my aunts, my cousins, everyone was living in the same building.
- [05:19]
Rahul Tandon
How many people were there?
- [05:20]
Tariq Haddad
It sounds a lot, but by 2011, there were like 660 people living in that building of the same family. And the reason for that is my grandmother used to say, in times of test, family is best. You know, the fun part of it is every time someone gets married in our family, my grandfather would build another floor. So it kept growing up and up and up.
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Rahul Tandon
You're a multi story building by the end, weren't you?
- [05:44]
Tariq Haddad
That's right, yes. So that's actually the reason why we consider our life before the war something that we need to cherish the memories of. Regardless of what happened after the war,
- [05:54]
Rahul Tandon
what came was a war that forced millions of Syrians to flee their homes. Some of Tariq's relatives were killed, others were arrested.
- [06:03]
Tariq Haddad
There's a lot of trauma and pain associated with these experiences, but at the same time, there are a lot of togetherness moments. I will give you something that I remember very vividly. So in the middle of 2012, around the middle of July, I came back home after a training at the hospital. We went to our apartment on the second floor. We all had supper. My siblings, we are seven siblings. So my siblings all went to their bedrooms. And then around 10:30pm that night, we started hearing explosions all around our building. So what I did is I picked out the curtain and I saw helicopters hovering over us. Tanks and soldiers, they are everywhere in the neighborhood. And these soldiers were setting up checkpoints and making sure that no man between the age of 18 and 60 years old would leave the neighborhood. So it was around half an hour later that we started hearing louder explosions. The helicopters was bombing, the tank was bombing everywhere in the neighborhood indiscriminately, regardless of who was living there, regardless if there were children or not. So my entire family were running on the stairs that night. We lost power. And then we went to my grandmother's house. There was a little tiny room that could barely fit 20 of us. And imagine 60 members of my family stuck in a little tiny room in the basement that was barely actually fitting us. And we were unable to go out for around five nights. And at any moment, you know, the roof could collapse on our heads. But then on the sixth day, there was a ceasefire for one hour. And my family decided to leave the country right after that because of the trauma, the staying in the basement without food, without medications, with only the cries and screams of kids. But my grandmother was going around and saying, everything's going to be all right. Everything's going to be all right.
- [07:45]
Rahul Tandon
Yeah. And we have seen, haven't we, so many millions of people who have left Syria, many of them desperately wanting to return home. Can we look at what happened to the business during that? Because I think your factory was destroyed as well. And your father, you used that lovely term before, he was the happiness bringer. And I presume that during the war it was hard to sell chocolate, it was hard to make chocolate. And his ability to provide happiness, it was a lot harder.
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Tariq Haddad
The most astonishing thing that happened for my father during the war is that he was exactly the opposite of what I was thinking was going to happen. My father kept the factory running during the war. I said, dad, it's a war. He said, people need to be happier during a war. More than the peacetime. Right? So he kept the factory running.
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Rahul Tandon
How did he do that?
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Tariq Haddad
The factory was on the eastern suburbs of Damascus, and the fighting was more towards the southern part of the city. So he was able to keep the factory running for at least a few months. After we lost our home, hundreds of employees that were relying on the factory to stay open at that time.
- [08:45]
Rahul Tandon
That picture of you all trapped inside the house, it's an image that will stay, I'm sure, with many of the listeners for some time. So it's understandable that you wanted to leave Syria. But for your dad who'd set up this business, who had a commitment to the country, who had a commitment to the people who worked for him, that must have been a very difficult decision.
- [09:03]
Tariq Haddad
One of the most difficult decisions that my family had to take is to leave our homeland, regardless of everything else, regardless of how many people we lost in the family, they were shot dead, they were arrested, they were kidnapped, they were tortured. My brother in law that was kidnapped from his bedroom in the middle of the night and was tortured 10 floors underground in one of the security departments and branches in downtown Damascus. You know, all of these memories were very hard. But leaving our country and just imagining that photo of us in that Volkswagen that we were driving across the border, it was extremely difficult for everyone. But my father kept the factory running until the end of 2012. And even leaving the factory was not easy for him. But he waited until the finish line, and that's what happened in December 2012. He was working in the factory and I was watching the news and I called him immediately. I said, dad, please shut down and ask everyone to leave. They're coming for you. They're coming to the region that the factory was in. And my father asked everyone to leave. He wanted everyone to be safe. He drove outside of the factory. And then around 12 minutes after my father left, the factory was bombed by an airstrike. And my father did not know what happened, but he saw pictures of the factory afterwards on his friend's timeline. And then he knew. Everything is gone. Everything is gone. Everything is gone.
- [10:21]
Rahul Tandon
Describe to me, because you must have seen those pictures as well, what you saw when you looked at those pictures and how you felt at that moment.
- [10:29]
Tariq Haddad
I did not cry during the war until that moment. And that's for a reason. You know, I. I knew that my father has built this factory, the blood, sweat and tears. And he wanted to continue spreading happiness. He wanted to have this amazing value that he was fighting for everywhere across the city and across the country and the world to continue and to have a prosperous business. And he built it with so much hard work and determination and perseverance. So seeing these photos certainly broke everyone's heart in my family. At the end of the day, you know, my father was speechless for three days. The only thing he was saying, everything's gone, everything is gone, Everything is gone.
- [11:05]
Rahul Tandon
Yeah.
- [11:05]
Tariq Haddad
And that's actually what led our family to start thinking seriously about leaving the country.
- [11:09]
Rahul Tandon
And you did leave, didn't you? And you went to Lebanon. Initially, I just wondered what that journey was like, what it was like inside the camps in Lebanon and whether at any point you in your mind had a thought of, I've seen my father helpless. I've seen him lose everything. What is the most, one of the most important things in his life to him? His business, his factory, giving happiness to people, and I want to rebuild that again. Did that thought come in your mind?
- [11:35]
Tariq Haddad
It did. Absolutely it did. And it was really difficult, you know, to see my family, you know, challenged to rebuild their lives in a country that received 2 million refugees over a very short period of time. However, we knew that we need to start thinking clearly about our long term plan. And that was being resettled somewhere else.
- [11:54]
Rahul Tandon
You're listening to Business Daily from the BBC World Service.
- [12:00]
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- [13:25]
Rahul Tandon
I'm Rahul Tandon. Today I'm talking to Tariq Haddad, whose family chocolate business set up by his dad, was destroyed in Syria's civil war. Tariq and his relatives were among nearly 7 million Syrians who were forced to flee, first to neighboring countries like Lebanon and Turkey and then further afield. Tariq and his family ended up in Canada, where he became a citizen and we founded the family chocolate business.
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Tariq Haddad
I applied to go to 14 countries around the world and I was trying my best, you know, for my family to travel, immigrate as soon as possible because I was seeing them, my father was counting down to death, my siblings were out of schools, everyone was living in a depression that I really felt that they were not going to come out of it. And at that time, the analogy I was thinking about is you can be a victim or you can be a victor. It is absolutely up to you. You can sit down and complain and say you cannot do anything or you can dig down and find solution. I was working and volunteering with WHO and UNHCR and many other organizations across the country at that time when, when I was trying, you know, to help others and use my skills, we were able to stay alive and also apply to come to Canada by the end of 2014. But our application was delayed. It took us around a year to get everything sorted out and I arrived in Canada on December 18, 2015.
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Rahul Tandon
And when you got to Canada, the family is clearly important to you. How many of you got to Canada? Did your father make that journey with you as well?
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Tariq Haddad
Not at the beginning, you know, I was invited to travel alone. And the reason why I had to travel alone is there's no place on the planes, basically. So they filled hundreds of people on those early planes. And I was one of the lucky ones to arrive on the third plane that brought Syrian refugees to Canada back then. So I tricked my family to come to Canada, and they came on December 8th and 9th. They landed here. So coming from Damascus, a city of millions of people being resettled in the community of that is 5,000 people, imagine the transition that our family had to go through, the cultural shock that they had to go through.
- [15:32]
Rahul Tandon
I wondered how quickly those thoughts came to your mind, how quickly you sat with your dad and said, I want to rebuild this business once again. And when you discussed it, what did he say? Was he keen to do that? Was it hard for him to think about doing it again?
- [15:48]
Tariq Haddad
When I thought about coming to Canada, it was mainly my purpose not to do business, but to really go back to my medical studies. And then a friend of mine told me that, do you know, if you had a heart attack on the streets of Toronto, it's safer for you to be in a taxi rather than being at the emergency room at the hospital. And I said, why? He said, because 60 to 70% of cab drivers in Toronto are immigrant physicians who are not accepted to go back to practice medicine. Using that challenge as an opportunity, I thought, you know, that my family can really rebuild their business. My father did not speak English when he came here. My mother did not speak, you know, English. My siblings were all, like, trying to get adjusted and acclimatized. So it was clear to me that I have a responsibility. And that responsibility is to translate our skills and our experiences into an opportunity for a life here. And there's something that happened, really, that convinced me.
- [16:38]
Rahul Tandon
What was the thing that convinced you that reopening the business, resetting up the business, was the right thing to do.
- [16:45]
Tariq Haddad
A few days after my family arrived in Canada, I went to one of the coffee shops on Main Street. And the amount of welcome that my family received was remarkable. There was that one person, you know, that. That came to challenge me. And he saw my picture on the front page of the casket, the local newspaper. And then he said, tarek, I read your story. Welcome to Canada. But why did you come here to take our jobs. And something ticked in my brain when I heard him say those things. And I said, thank you, but we did not come here to take jobs. We came here to create them. But I really figured out, you know, that My family had done it before. The only thing that changed is the geography and the language and the system. We just have to learn how to do it again here.
- [17:27]
Rahul Tandon
Well, you've done that extremely successfully. But something, something you said there was, you know, we wanted to set it up again. The only challenges were language, system, geography. I mean, those are big challenges. So once you made that decision, it kind of been easy to establish it.
- [17:45]
Tariq Haddad
We thought to ourselves, you know, we can help in building a business that can hire people to work with us. Not to work for us, but to work with us to build something that is meaningful and to translate all those skills that we brought with us and at the same time make sure we have a message with it that inspires people to do more good.
- [18:02]
Rahul Tandon
Was it easy to get money to begin with because you need cash to set up a business, to set up a factory?
- [18:09]
Tariq Haddad
We went to the community and told them, we don't have a credit like in Canada, right? We just arrived here. We are newcomers, so there's no one that's going to give us a loan to start a business. There's no one that really can give us anything because we're just here. We just arrived and then we went to the community and we said, look guys, we have a house that is on a main road in the community and we need to build a small factory next to it. And everyone was doing their part. You have 50 volunteers going to the town hall, applying for a permit, buying a small building for us, giving us an interest free loan that we can pay over a year or two years, buying building materials, volunteering after their work. They were coming on shifts in the summer of 2016 to build that chocolate factory for us. All the plumbers, every electrician in town, everyone who can help, they signed up and they showed up at our door and they were asking, how can we help you?
- [18:58]
Rahul Tandon
You know, when we were talking earlier, we had that conversation, didn't we, about you watching your father look so helpless, feel so helpless, and you feeling so helpless as well at that moment. It must have been great to see that change in him. As the business began to develop, I
- [19:15]
Tariq Haddad
saw that spark in him that I did not see when he was living in Lebanon, when he lost everything. I saw, not even in my father, but honestly, everyone in my family, my mother, my siblings, everyone jumped in, everyone was helping out, Everyone was trying to make sure that this is a successful enterprise. Although we were selling only at the farmers markets at the time, but we found ways to do good through it. That really moved us, moved Our way of thinking forward in terms of what we can do with this business.
- [19:43]
Rahul Tandon
Can I ask you a little bit about the chocolate? Who do you think likes chocolate more, Syrians or Canadians? Where's it easier to do business?
- [19:53]
Tariq Haddad
You know, I go back to one of the comments I made earlier that, you know, chocolate doesn't know language, doesn't know culture, doesn't know background, doesn't know faith. It's very universal. It's like music. Everyone understands it. They might taste it differently. They might have different preferences. I've seen more Canadian eyes spark with joy, you know, when we talk about chocolate and they taste our products more than I have seen in Syria in my whole life there. So some of the flavors that we have invented in Syria, it was quite popular there. It was mainly, you know, with the Syrian blossoms of cherries and apricots and Syrian fruits and Syrian nuts and pistachios and so many other things that my father was mixing with rose water and that Canadians have not tried before.
- [20:34]
Rahul Tandon
When you describe your chocolate, I think I would be at the front of that queue because it sounds absolutely delicious. Tell us how the business is doing now and in terms of giving back, how do you balance that within the business now?
- [20:49]
Tariq Haddad
I remember very well, you know, the early days when we were creating a collection. We called it the Peace Bars. And it was a very symbolic launch because we wanted people to speak peace in so many languages. And the slogan for that campaign was one piece won't hurt, and peace is beautiful in every language. So we were teaching people how to say peace in Punjabi, in Arabic, in literally every language. And that's really what we found, is that people really were connecting with it. I wanted the name to have a message by itself. We came up with the name Peace by Chocolate because we really believe that peace is about passion, enthusiasm, advocacy, contribution, and excellence. And chocolate is that amazing, universal language of love and kindness.
- [21:32]
Rahul Tandon
Can I talk to you about Syria now and what's happening in the country that you left? You have a new president. Ahmed El Shira.
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Tariq Haddad
That's right.
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Rahul Tandon
Are you optimistic about your country's future? Are you hopeful that one day you can return and sell chocolate there?
- [21:49]
Tariq Haddad
I take so much pride in whatever, you know, it's happening in the country right now, in Syria. It's transforming to the better. I'm seeing hope in the eyes of so many people. And what I learned after I came to Canada, you know, politicians come and go, and I think it's the story of the determination of the Syrian people that they have fought so hard over so long to have their dignity, have their say, have a fresh breath of life finally, after so much killing, so much destruction. And if you talk to me about hope, I think I'm hopeful 100%. If you talk to me about optimism, I'm very optimistic about what's going to happen in the country. I think it's going to take time, you know, to reach the satisfaction of the Syrian people in terms of providing the services that they are looking for.
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Rahul Tandon
It's a huge job, isn't it? It's a massive reconstruction that needs to take place.
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Tariq Haddad
I think the Syrian government's role right now is one of the toughest government jobs in all countries that we are witnessing. And that is because, you know, there is. There's a lot of demands. You know, there's a lot of need. There's a lot of. There's a lot of families, millions of people still living in camps in northern Syria and in the southern part. My oldest sister, Kinana, is still in Damascus. She was trapped after 2012, and she's still there. So she tells me stories of love and happiness, finally, that people saw, you know, after December 8, 2024. And she tells me as well, you know, that people cannot find anything to eat. But I think the country is going in the right direct. So it's a connection, you know, you can't take Syria out of us. And even if we immigrated 10,000 km far away, the country still lives with us forever. This is where we are building our lives, but we are going to support our home country as we are building our life here.
- [23:32]
Rahul Tandon
Yeah, I think it's a journey of so many people, isn't it, who have left the countries of their birth and moved elsewhere. They never lose that part of the country, though. I saw that with my own father who made their journey from. From India to here. You mentioned that man who came up to you and said, why have you come here? Did you ever meet him again? Has he. Has he seen the success of your business? Have you ever had a conversation with him again?
- [23:57]
Tariq Haddad
I actually was waiting for this question. Thank you. Because that guy who was skeptical about us became our first employee. Wow. In our shop, I seeked him out in the community to tell him that if you give people a chance, they're going to give back. They're going to give jobs.
- [24:15]
Rahul Tandon
And when you went and offered him a job, was he shocked? How did he. Did he have to think about it? What did he. What did he say? Did he say, you're joking?
- [24:25]
Tariq Haddad
Yes. He was actually questioning if that was true or that was a joke. It was tough to convince him in the beginning, but then he was convinced.
- [24:33]
Rahul Tandon
What do you wish you'd known before starting the company? Because it's not always an easy journey, is it?
- [24:39]
Tariq Haddad
It is very tough to be an entrepreneur. It's really very hard. It steals you from so many moments that you really wish that you had more time to do it. However, there's one thing that I really kind of wish that I had known. Everyone I was meeting with, they shared something very, very important with me, but I thought it was too late. And that is the question that I asked everyone I met. Why do people fail in life and in business? Number one, people fail because they assume that their problems are unique. Number two, people fail because they fear the future. Number three, people fail because they resist the change. Number four, they fail because they dwell on mistakes. And this is kind of, you know, the summary of 10 years of being an entrepreneur is really I should not assume that my problems are unique because you find so many people around you that they're facing the same challenges. You should not resist the change. You need to embrace it. And once you have a mistake, you do not need to dwell on it. You just need to move on. So I think really one of the most important things that businesses need to learn right now is the art of compassion.
- [25:40]
Rahul Tandon
The inspirational story of Tariq Haddad there, the founder of Piece by Chocolate. That's it for this week's edition of Meet the Founders with me, Rahul Tandon. The producer was Amir Adhan. To listen to more conversations like this, search and subscribe to Business Daily wherever you get your podcasts. And please get in touch with us by emailing us at Business DailyBC.
- [26:17]
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