From cleaner to CEO: Meet UAE expat behind viral Filipino cheese cake

A 57-year-old Filipina, who arrived in Dubai 16 years ago on a visit visa, worked as a cleaner for a French couple in Umm Suqeim. Now, Maria Paz Banaag-Marquez — known as ‘Nanay Paz' in the community — owns and runs four pastry shops across the UAE.

Nanay Paz's first shop in Dubai's Satwa was small but easy to spot because of the long queues that spilled out of its doors, especially around Christmas and New Year.

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Her cheesecake has become the subject of numerous TikTok videos, highlighting how the Dh13 solo tub and the Dh55 round cake are worth the drive wherever you are in the UAE.

“Who would have thought I could put up a business in a foreign land? That would require a huge amount of money," she said. "But yes – as I look back – it can be done. I’ve done it."

She didn't have the funds to start a business. "The only seed capital I had was diligence,” she told Khaleej Times.

Starting her business

Nanay Paz started her business at the residence of her employer and, eventually, she started sharing rent payments of Dh12,000 a month for the 500sqm villa.

She made and sold pastries to supplement her Dh3,000 monthly income as a cleaner.

“Those days when I had to do all the manual work, I experienced placing a cardboard on the floor to sleep on while on break from making pastries. I had to keep working, else I wouldn’t have anything to sell,” said Paz, a mum of three and the fifth of 12 children from an agriculturist family in Sariaya, Quezon in the Philippines.

Nanay Paz, a college undergrad who took up business administration, started promoting her pastry business online in 2014.

It was a big hit — so much so that after a year of doing her side hustle, she was already declining the salary from her employer, a businessman engaged in textiles.

“The online pastry business was already earning,” said Nanay Paz, adding: “I told my employer, I am now able to regularly send money home. You don’t have to pay me anymore.”

Her employer, whose wife passed away in 2013 due to cancer, went back to France for good in 2021. Nanay Paz inherited a Peugeot from her employer as she capped her 13 years of service as a domestic worker.

She, however, did not leave the house and continued to pay the rent for the two-bedroom villa with its own swimming pool.

First pastry shop

The same year, in December, Nanay Paz opened her first brick-and-mortar pastry shop in Satwa. She and her business partner borrowed money and her younger brother, an architect in Saudi Arabia, also gave financial support.

“We were borrowing money here and there, pawning what we could pawn. There were just me and my partner. We didn’t have a baker. The good thing was that the business was already running and I remained optimistic because we already have many customers online,” said Nanay Paz.

In just three years, the expat managed to open three more pastry shops. Her branches in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah opened in March and December 2023, respectively. The fourth branch, located in Al Ain, opened in February this year.

The fifth branch — which is set to be her biggest pastry shop — will open in Deira, near the Union Metro Station, in October this year.

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