Startup of the Week: 10 minute "Mama Approved" meals with Sit Beit Kitchen

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Every week, ILQ features a different Qatari startup in our ‘Startup of the Week’ segment. Qatar has some of the most creative, unique, and impactful startups in the region, and we cover them all across a variety of industries in Doha, from fashion and beauty to food and dining, health, education, and more!

This week, we're cooking and eating "Mama Approved" meals with Sit Beit, a meal kit service that provides you with all you need to recreate a real traditional Arabic meal in 10 minutes of cooking time!

According to Rana, one of the co-founders, Sit Beit Kitchen is "a simple solution to the time-consuming, complicated old cooking methods. It does all the dirty work for you. You don't need to burden yourself looking up recipes, scavenging supermarket aisles for ingredients, or chopping those onions. Sit Beit offers traditional food that is already pre-portioned, prepped and ready-to-cook.

Made for the busy over-achievers, Sit Beit promises you a trip down memory lane and right into mama's kitchen!"

From idea to supermarket shelves

Rana also shared that the idea behind Sit Beit started with her wondering "Why isn't there an easy Betty-Crocker-like solution to cooking?" on her living room couch, after her first year of marriage. This was all because of her simple desire to find a way to cook faster.

The recipes were then created by the co-founder's mother, a real Sit Beit. After hand-packing the ingredients herself into brown pouches, the cofounder started testing the first prototype in early 2018. Shortly after, with immediate and amazing feedback, Sit Beit came to life and to supermarket shelves in Ramadan of 2019.

The business is proud to say that it's a husband and wife run operation and that they have won second place in the home-business category of a competition.

A novelty in Qatar

Sit Beit is the first of its kind in Qatar - providing dried, pre-portioned and prepackaged recipes all in one pouch with a shelf life of more than a year.

Being a novelty, the company also encountered its fair share of challenges. According to Rana, "the challenge of introducing a new product to a market isn't easy, usually, it's a lot easier to compete in an existing market. We work hard on putting ourselves in our customers' shoes and finding the best ways to reach them and gain their trust.

Our brand is simple, fun and witty- every recipe has its own personality, representing familiar family members that you'd find in every household. We know our customers are busy, which is why our brand is loud and attractive."

When asked about the feedback from their customers, Rana answered:

We have had great feedback- Most people love the idea but are a little skeptical at first, but when they taste the food they cannot believe that it came out of a pouch and that's when we hit the jackpot!

On startups and business

The founders are local and young, they lead a very busy and ambitious lifestyle, like a very large percentage of the population in Qatar, which is why they are very familiar with the problem of eating healthy in Qatar. One of the main ingredients to living a healthier lifestyle is cooking and the founders of Sit Beit have dedicated all their time and passion to create a solution that makes cooking accessible and easy for everyone. (And actually tastes like mama's food!)

ILQ also asked Rana what they think of startups in Qatar:

It's incredible to see all the up and coming innovations in Qatar, there's no doubt that this sparks more innovation and competition in the country- all this helps with an economy's growth.

We hope to reach an international audience with our brand and we are proud to represent it as a National Qatari brand. We aim to introduce Arabic cuisine worldwide, and what better way than through an easy- healthy and vegan- cooking solution that takes less than 10 minutes to cook?

And lastly, the founders of Sit Beit shared this for young entrepreneurs:

If you have a goal and a passion then just start. Starting is always hard because a creative usually wants to perfect this step, but always remember that everything is a start. You always have room to improve. In fact, it's always great to "fail" because that's when you have to be at your strongest and put out the best of you on the table. We are all capable of anything and everything. Nothing is impossible, and everything is figure-outable!