Emirati homegrown concept Salt began with a simple thought of changing the dining landscape and transforming the way people experience food. Founded in 2014 by Emirati entrepreneur Amal Al Marri and Deem Albassam of Saudi origin, Salt has grown rapidly and has now 9 permanent locations across the UAE and KSA.
In May 2019 Salt launched a new summer campaign, The Mango Box, and went on the hunt to find the perfect mangoes. The idea was inspired by a local tradition of sending mango boxes to friends, families and neighbours every summer. The founders of Salt travelled the region including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and India to meet farmers, sellers and traders who were in the mango business for generations. After hand-picking mangoes across the region, trying different varieties, learning every step about the right taste and consistency, Salt brought back a haul of the tastiest mangoes to create ‘the mango softie’.
‘Sharing food is a part of our culture, a chance to connect and communicate. Living in a fast-paced world, we tend to drift away from the simple traditions and gestures that hold great value to our hospitable nature in the Middle East. While being a very popular brand for tourists and locals, we felt the responsibility to keep the tradition alive’ says Amal Al Marri, co-founder of Salt.
Creating a lifestyle movement and unique experience, Salt built a pop-up in the heart of the Dubai International Financial Centre for a limited time only and welcomed customers into a life-sized yellow mango box serving fresh mangoes, mango smoothies and the much-awaited ‘mango softie’. The Salt mango box attracted an impressive amount of traffic to the financial district over a short period of 22 days. Simultaneously Salt launched at Manarat Al Saadiyat, a gallery space in Abu Dhabi, for 40 days. The mango boxes attracted over 45,000 customers from all over the UAE.
In about a month of launching the campaign, a large majority of restaurants and cafes were inspired by the campaign and picked up on the mango season trend and quickly started releasing mango products, ranging from ice creams, to cakes and shakes.
Following the success of the Mango Box pop-ups, Salt continued the summer campaign at their locations across the UAE and KSA until September 1st before the fresh mangoes were sold out and mango season was officially over.
For 3 months Salt used over 56 tons of mangoes. With the summer campaign, Salt wanted to take a step and show the real process of creating products by crediting those who deserve credit, such as in this case, mango farmers, resellers and traders. The mission was to create a movement by bringing communities together and transform the way people experience food. Salt creates an intersection of the unique demographics in the Middle East, inspiring residents to feel like tourists and tourists to feel like residents. Just like the ingredient that enriches the flavor to a meal, Salt adds life to underserved locations.
