Today we’d like to introduce you to Mona Ahmed.
Hi Mona, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
We started off in North Carolina where my father-in-law opened a small restaurant called Ali Baba. We lived there for nine years. Then our family moved to Atlanta, we opened another restaurant called Jerusalem Chef in Alpharetta. We stayed there for three years and thankfully, it’s still running. Besides that, it has already been four years since we started our newest family business- Rozana. This is where we are today, it’s all about food and culture, we love to expose customers to healthier authentic middle eastern dishes. Rozana is the name of a flower in our country, and we wanted a name that can be pronounced by all nationalities. Our family and ancestors loved food and flavors and every generation was in the food business. So here at Rozana, we love to offer both food and culture in a plate. We also involve family into the business as all of my kids help out around here. Our main goal is for our customers to have a unique experience as well as make it affordable so students and families can dine as they please.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
One of the first challenges we faced was during finding a location that is affordable. Finally when we did find the location- we saw that we were not getting lots of customers because it was outside of Atlanta, or at least that is what some of the other customers told us. We did not know people to help us advertise Rozana until very recently.
We did not have enough funding to hire someone to decorate the place and set up the kitchen, so we did it on our own as a family.
We needed to put an excessive amount of effort and time into this business. We were working on our own without workers for quite some time. Every now and then, we have to be here at the restaurant all day 14-16 hours straight when there is catering orders so that means we get less time with family at home.
Some of the other challenges for me is putting up with angry customers and calm them down when they arrive with a party larger than 12 without any reservation but still expect to be seated right away and get the food as soon as they order.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We specialize in our Mixed Grill Platter, Chicken Shawarma and Falafel.
We not only care about getting the food out to our customers but also about the temperature, fresh marination and the ingredients that go into it.
There are of course ups and downs but as a family of six, we always take care of everything. We make sure that our expenses do not go too high, because then we will have to charge our customers more on the dishes.
Therefore, we make our own sauce from scratch to cut down costs and even own pita bread.
We have a dream of opening a second location, this expansion has been a dream for our family since our second year of Rozana’s grand opening. So we will try to do that someday.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
One of the most important lessons we learned during Covid-19 is how to be patient and take it easy instead of grieving about it. The first thing affecting our restaurant right when Covid-19 started was the number of orders we were getting per day.
We had to accept the fact that we were getting less customers every single day until the point we had to stop the dining in option as we could not afford to pay so many servers. It was a really hard decision because the servers were like family and we had to think about them as well as their families. My kids decided to step in to help my husband and I in order to get the to-go and curbside orders ready for the few orders we were getting.
Our main priority was safety of our chefs, a couple of servers, our beloved customers and of course, my family. Our restaurant was closed for dine-in for almost nine months. Rozana for us is like our other kid that we decorated, made special, took care of and loved every day to get it to this point but those nine months felt like nine difficult years.
After we opened back up towards the end of 2020, we had to maintain social distancing, which meant we had to cut down our capacity of the number of people that could be seated inside the restaurant. There was a time when we even stopped our Friday Bollywood night with the DJ because we did not have enough people to cover the cost of the DJ.
However, with all the hardships, we feel like Covid-19 made us as a family quite strong because now we work better as a team than ever.
Pricing:
- Falafel – healthy and its the bottom of our culture. They are only $8.5 a plate for 8 pieces.
Contact Info:
- Email: rozanarestaurantatl@gmail.com
- Website: www.rozanarestaurant.com/
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/rozanaatl/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/RozanaAtl/
- Yelp: www.yelp.com/biz/rozana-restaurant-and-hookah-lounge-lilburn
Image Credits:
Food Pictures taken by- Farzana Zerin
