Today we’d like to introduce you to Ali Mahmood.
Hi Ali, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Growing up I was a professional in the photographic field, I was the best of the best back in my home country which is Iraq. Smartphones came to light and the industry took a big hit; I knew from that moment that I needed to do something that would not be taken from technology. Food was one of my first instinct, I researched and made sure that whatever I was going to do was not going to be defeated from technology. I looked around and wanted to do something healthy, high protein, no side effects on cholesterol, gaining weight and delicious. It was The falafel, The challenge was going to be making the best falafel in the world. I was good in chemistry so I know what would be the outcome when elements react with each other. I watched 100’s of YouTube recipes and I made a small lab to make experiments to make the best falafels. after a few months, I perfected the most amazing falafel recipe, crunchy from the outside, fluffy from the inside, and made sure the color was a real golden brown, and flavorful. I arrived to Arizona in August 2015, and I started to look for space to build a Restaurant but the cost was out of my budget. Then I started looking for a ready-to-go Restaurant, the only opportunity that was available and it was in my budget was a location inside of a gas station. it was a shell gas station on 67Th Ave and cactus road, it was a Mexican Restaurant so my family and I worked on opening it, we worked on it for two months and our grand opening was on June 1s, 2016. since the day we opened our motto was “Quality over anything” we made sure that no matter what we did our quality will outstanding anything. so, we worked for the first two years, 12-13 hours daily without any day off, it was extremely difficult, we did not have enough income to hire someone to help us, after the two years the business was taking off because people finally started appreciating our quality and it became more known. In 2019 we started closing Sunday for a family get-together, it was our only rest day. since we opened our reviews on most platform was talking about “The Hidden Gem”. we were ranked 5th place on best place to eat out of 50 in greater Phoenix. Everything was amazing until COVID 19 hit us, we are lucky and happy that we survived because we had each other backs. In 2020, we got this amazing news according to yelp that we were ranked 2nd place our of 25 best falafel nationwide. In April 2021, we had this great opportunity for a ready-to-go Restaurant located at 49th Ave and thunderbird. We opened that location on June 1st of 2021, marking our 5-year anniversary.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In the beginning, our biggest struggle would be community beliefs that gas station food was not good quality food. So, it was up to us to change some people’s beliefs and to get them to like gas station food, and we simply did. another struggle was working long hours every day for a long time.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Casa De Falafel?
We specialize in middle eastern cuisine food, we have a restaurant now called Casa De Falafel, and we are working to launch wholesale food product, we will start
1. dry lentil soup (cook at home)
2. fried frozen falafel.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Always serve fresh high-quality food whatever the cost will be. one other important thing is consistency. hardworking with honest will pay you back. Always have a dream ahead of you and working for a new one when one is accomplished.
Contact Info:
- Email: cdfalafel@yahoo.com
- Website: https://cdfalafel.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/casadefalafel16/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CasaDeFalafelRestaurant/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/casa-de-falafel-glendale-2
- Other: https://www.womply.com/biz/casa-de-falafel-restaurant-mediterranean-grill-peoria-AZ/
Image Credits
Ali Mahmood
