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From HR professional to wellness advocate: How a health crisis led this Palestinian expat to make the big leap

Hadil AlKhatib now owns a chain of successful healthy eateries in Dubai

Hadil AlKhatib’s journey does not start at The Roost Rotisserie or Broth Lab or her recent venture Catcha Matcha — three healthy eateries she started that have put her on the spotlight as one of the region’s foremost wellness advocate. Instead it begins with a memory. Memory of a homeland she has never seen or been to. But the mind has a way of conjuring images. And that is how she knows what the air in old city of Jerusalem would smell and feel like. What the Al Khatib mountain (her family that has seen generations of entrepreneurs draws the surname from the range) would look like! And then there are memories of 1948.

“My grandfather had a business, he used to run a chain of hotels in Jordan. When the exodus happened, everyone thought it would be temporary. But just to be safe, he got my father, grandmother and siblings to Jordan. They were fortunate to not go through what many other Palestinians had to,” she recalls.

Hadil’s family settled in Jordan. But her father, an architect by profession, found a home away from home in Abu Dhabi after a brief stint in Qatar. That is where she and her siblings were born and raised. “My father always thought we were here for a little while as he expanded his architectural firm into the GCC, that we would return to Jordan where my father grew up. But that did not happen. No matter how much you plan, some things are out of your control. I think every Palestinian understands that,” she says.

A few years after settling in Abu Dhabi there came another blow with the untimely death of her father owing to a heart attack. Hadil was nine-and-a -half years old and her elder brother was 16. “He always said no amount of medicine could help when one is grieving. There is a part of me that strongly believes that the reason my father was gone so young was sorrow. He had been so upset about not living in Palestine that he carried it with him in his heart,” she says.

Hadil’s rationale may be rooted in modern psychology that identifies intergenerational trauma as an “apparent transmission of trauma between generations of a family”. In other words, those who have experienced trauma are likely to pass it down to their children and grandchildren, albeit unconsciously. Years later, Hadil would experience something crushing… only she was resilient to chart her way out of it.

As a human resources professional working in the energy sector in Abu Dhabi, she was on top of her game for 13 years. “I managed a team of 110 people,” she recalls. “I was in charge of training, development and head-hunting. The most important part of the job was to make sure that the people were productive, efficient and, above all, happy.”

Balancing married and professional life was simple until she became a mother. “When I got married and moved to Dubai, I continued to travel to Abu Dhabi for work because I loved my job. In fact, I would do so till the ninth month of my pregnancy,” she says. But once her first child was born, there was that difficult choice most women are confronted with — either care for the baby or care for the job. After much deliberation, she chose the former after her maternity leave.

No matter how many books we read or videos we watch, nothing prepares a woman for the stark realities of motherhood. But Hadil coped. She coped until one day she found herself depleted — not because of motherhood but something deeper, something unresolved, something that has remained undiagnosed till date. “Just before my daughter turned one, I moved to Dubai. One day, I woke up and felt sick — mentally as well as physically. I felt spiritually crushed. I thought it was because I had just left a job that I’d loved so much, but that was not the only reason. I would sleep for 10 hours and wake up fatigued. I got my hormones and blood tested, and nothing was wrong. There was no conclusive diagnosis,” she says.

This was Hadil’s limbo — and she stayed in it for three years. Till one day when she realised she had had enough. She decided to turn the gaze inwards to heal. “I enrolled myself at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York. But during the pandemic, they were offering this course online. I learnt a lot about nutrition and biology, and understood that healing actually begins from the gut.”

She followed this course with another one on gut healing and began to apply the protocols. “I replaced my morning coffee with bone broth. They say bone broth is liquid gold and has all necessary vitamins, minerals and amino acids that are healing for the body. I began to consume more superfoods and pressed juices, started reading labels of anything I would buy from the market. Food became my medicine. I eventually began to connect with myself,” she says.

Sometimes, our quest for independence and success means that we put our other needs aside in a singleminded pursuit of what we think we want. Hadil’s reality check may have come in the form of an undiagnosed condition, but its remedy had always been within. As she began to navigate her way through nutrition and applied those principles to herself, regeneration began.

It was now time to take that learning to someplace where others could benefit too. The Roost Rotisserie, a healthy eatery launched in 2017, was a result of that quest. “I remember being pregnant with my second child after having lost a child before when I started The Roost. There was a deep sense of satisfaction in knowing that the concept could work. “My logic back then was — of course, you can have fries, but know which oils they are cooked in. Have that burger but know where the ingredients have been sourced from. Food is not meant to be deep fried or cooked fast. It is supposed to be cooked slowly,” she says.

The decision to add ‘liquid gold’ to the menu as an appetiser for free came in the years when The Roost was gaining popularity. “I remember walking up to the chef and asking him to serve something as an appetiser for free, something that could be healing for the good bacteria and enzymes in the gut,” she recalls. That would be bone broth. And when the said appetiser began to command popularity of its own is when Hadil decided to start Broth Lab in 2020 right when the pandemic started.

The local food and beverage (F&B) industry is competitive as is. On top of that, launching a concept during pandemic did not seem to make business sense to anyone who Hadil spoke to. “My rationale had been simple: Covid taught us the importance of taking care of ourselves. So, if people do not take charge of their health by eating right during Covid, chances are they never would.”

Back in the day, bone broth had become something of a viral sensation on the Internet. Hadil sought collaboration with other players in the market, who thought of themselves as her competitors and would hence operate separately. “I come from an industry where there was a monopoly. I understand that being solo is not healthy because it does not compel you to strive to do better. I prefer collaboration over competition, and it makes sense in the F&B industry because it is the consumer who chooses anyway. Would you eat at the same restaurant for five years? Human beings seek variety, so the competition has to be healthy.”

Today, many years and challenges later, Hadil finds herself on the brink of expansion. Broth Lab will soon have a presence in the United States and other GCC countries. The journey from an HR professional to an F&B entrepreneur has been anything but easy but the learnings have been important: “You can have the best education but if you are lacking in stamina and patience, you are not going to survive as an entrepreneur. The margins in F&B are really small, and it takes years for an idea to see fruition in the way you had imagined it.” Hadil’s patience has not only paid off but has paved way for a healing that allows her to own her narrative on her terms.

anamika@khaleejtimes.com

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