People know me mainly because of Sweet Tooth, which was nurtured and raised using unconventional ways of marketing. That and my business ethos always made it stand out. One such example is that transgenders and disabled people have the opportunity to work with us.
I believe that every place is an art piece in itself and my dream is to own places that money can’t buy. So challenging myself by opening branches in some of the most remote places of Pakistan such as Hunza and Mushkpuri was experiential for me.
At the moment, we have 10 branches in 4 cities. In every branch of Sweet Tooth, we have added a flavor of the city it is situated in via its interior or by introducing local desserts. We aim to create fusion desserts by introducing flavors of other cities in lieu of having a generic menu.
However, we don’t apply the same strategy to every branch. We test different businessmen in ness techniques at different branches which is why our Nathiagali branch has a grab-and-go vibe while Murree and Heera Mandi depicts the old feels of the city.
Despite having studied textiles and not having much knowledge about the food industry, I started Sweet Tooth armed with a list of innovative ideas. Those ideas allowed me to play with quirky desserts such as chocolate gol gappas, chocolate pizza and burger.
All the credit goes to my late father who instilled the very essence of entrepreneurship in me and his stories taught me that what's important is to stand up again in life after you've failed. My mother is also an inspiration to me in many ways. For starters, she taught me the power of networking at a very young age by teaching simple things like saying Salaam and shaking hands. I tried many ventures from selling candies to arranging concerts and had not one but two t-shirt brands and out of all these failures, Sweet Tooth was born. Still, for two months, my family had no idea I was doing this as I wanted to test it out before telling anyone.
Sweet Tooth gave me the ability to do things I always wanted to do like live music gigs, talks and so on. After the successes of Sweet Tooth, it's only natural to continue to experiment with café culture in places where it’s not a trend.
We’ve been aiming high since the beginning and we know that there is a lot in store for Sweet Tooth. We are all set to expand in the global market - USA is already in plans. My ultimate goal for Sweet Tooth is for it to be at forefront in all the places that come up when someone Googles Pakistan. After all, if you look closely, the cones in our logo have a smiling factor which depicts spreading smiles - Umer Hussain CEO The Sweet Tooth