How a sweet treat worth £ 15 has become viral

On vacation in the United Arab Emirates (water) last week, there was only one mission in my mind – to put its hand on the viral bar “Dubai Chocolate”.

If you are on Tiktok, you will have seen the bar, which combines the flavors of chocolate, pistachio and tahini with a Filo pastry, and is inspired by the Arabian dessert Knafeh.

The original, called Can’t Get Knafeh, by Fix Chocolatier, has been sold exclusively to water since 2022. It becomes so popular on social networks that it is only for sale for two hours a day and is often sold in a few minutes.

But now, imitations, known by the nickname “Dubai Chocolat”, have struck British supermarkets, notably Waitrose, Lidl and Morrisons, with supermarkets Limit the number of bars Customers are allowed to buy.

Yezen Alani, who is repaired co -owner with his wife Sarah Hamouda, told the BBC that the world’s attention that Dubai Chocolate held was “flattering and humiliating”.

The Fix chocolate bar was imagined for the first time by Hamouda in 2021, who wanted flavors while she was pregnant.

Alani and Hamouda began to develop the bar a year later, managing the company alongside their corporate jobs.

“Sarah and I were raised in the United Kingdom and we moved to Dubai 10 years ago, so we have Western and Arab roots.

“We wanted to create flavors inspired by this,” said Alani.

Part of the attraction of chocolate is its exclusivity – you can only order it using a food delivery application, rather than walking in a store or catching it in the supermarket.

It costs around £ 15 per bar and can only be purchased for specific hours of the day to ensure that the company can respect all their orders.

I also saw similar bars sold in many stores in the region, nicknamed “Dubai Chocolate” and decorated with pistachios and Filo pastacing photos.

Alani says that the “copycat” bars are “very frustrating because people try imitations, which damage our brand”.

One of the reasons for raising the bar popularity was social media – with viral video by the user of Tiktok Maria Vehera From 2023, it was cited as one of the main reasons for its rise in power.

He shows Vehera trying Knafeh’s bar for the first time – as well as several others manufactured by the same chocolate maker – and was appreciated almost seven million times.

The way the bar is made is designed for social media – orange and green stains attractive on smooth milk chocolate with crunching sound that it makes when you break a piece.

Chocolate combined with pistachio is not new, but the real out -of -competition element is the crunchy nature of the garnish, the filo pastry adding a texture and a thickness to the bar.

Given that the computer bar can’t get Kafeh is only available in a country, other brands have started to sell their versions in the United Kingdom, including the Swiss chocolate manufacturer Lindt whose Dubai chocolate is sold for £ 10 in supermarkets.

Since the storage of the bar, Waitrose says they had to introduce a limit of two bars for customers In order to regulate stock levels.

Another version was also sold by home business, while the Lidl supermarket has its own version for £ 4.99 and also limits purchasing numbers.

An influencer documented how the bar was held behind for this reason.

Having tried the Lindt bar and a few other versions sold in corner stores, there is a whole contrast.

Fix chocolate is presented as a “dessert bar” and must be kept in the refrigerator, with a short expiration date as many dairy items.

This is not the case for the others, which have been designed to have a longer shelf life.

You can also see the difference in taste and texture – the original bar is almost double the width of the Lindt bar, which is more aligned on the size and shape of a standard chocolate bar.

When Alani and Hamouda started, they used a person to fill around six to seven orders per day.

But since its popularity, mainly thanks to Tiktok, their company now employs 50 people, who fill 500 orders per day.

A big point of discussion was the price of the product, which is £ 15 per bar.

“Everything is done by hand, each design is carried out by hand,” explains Alani.

“We use premium ingredients and the process is not like doing other bars – you have cooking, the molding of chocolate to design and with the garnish itself, even the pistachios are selected and treated by hand”.

Speaking in Arab affairs last year, Hamouda said: “My mother used to do Knafeh, and that’s something I wanted to capture my own path.

“Knafeh was the first flavor we perfected. Crunch, pistachio, it had to be fair,” she added.

Despite the success of the product, Alani says that “it was a difficult journey” because the pair worked together at full time while raising their two children.

“There were times when we wanted to abandon, but we said to ourselves” we will continue as long as we can pay the rent “and now we have no regrets because he worked”.