A collaborative research project between New York University Abu Dhabi and Tharawat Family Business Forum

Spotlight

Zalatimo

Information last updated on 14 May 2022

Snapshot

Founding

Family Name:

Zalatimo

Founder’s Name:

Mohammed Zalatimo

Earliest Documented Business Name:

Zalatimo Sweets

Founding Year:

1860

Founding Location:

Jerusalem, Palestine

Today

Current Operating Status:

Operating

Family Business Name:

Zalatimo Sweets

Headquarters Location:

Amman, Jordan

Key Industries:

Key Industries Food & Beverages

Number of Employees:

250 (as of 2019)

ABOUT THE FOUNDER

Mohammad Zalatimo was born in Jerusalem in 1830.[3] After serving as a young man in the Ottoman army, he returned to Jerusalem and married Jamila, with whom he had a son, Ibrahim. Jamila passed away some years later, and Mohammed remarried and had three more children.[4]

FOUNDING STORY

Having acquired some culinary skills, as well as exposure to the outside world, during his military service, Mohammed Zalatimo founded a small pastry shop in 1860.[5] The shop was based in the Old City’s Souk Khan El-Zeit, next door to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — a strategic location on what was Jerusalem’s busiest commercial street at the time.[6] The shop at first specialized exclusively in mutabbaq, a traditional Palestinian sweet that Mohammed Zalatimo handmade and served customers for breakfast.[7] The shop was an immediate success, and Zalatimo quickly expanded, annexing an adjacent outdoor seating area[8] and hiring three employees to assist him.[9]

GROWTH PHASE

As the shop’s business continued to grow, Ibrahim joined the operation, working alongside his father and learning his culinary craftsmanship. After Mohammed’s death, Ibrahim took over the shop.[10] By that point, the shop had diversified its production to include a variety of other sweets and pastries to complement their famous mutabbaq.[11]

 

For 125 years after first opening its doors, the Zalatimo shop was led by members of the family’s successive generations. It maintained its location and continued to operate as a “one-man-show,” where a Zalatimo descendent would make the sweets and freshly serve them to customers. [12]  The shop became famous among Palestinians both across the country and beyond, and it became a popular stop for visitors to the Holy City, welcoming an array of many foreign dignitaries and celebrities. [13] A popular saying emerged, that “anyone who has been to Jerusalem and did not eat Zalatimo’s mutabbaq, has indeed not been in Jerusalem.”[14]

 

Over time, however, it became increasingly difficult for the family to continue running the business, since many in the younger generations were no longer able, as Palestinians, to reside in the city of Jerusalem due to the political situation.[15]  They largely lived in Jordan or the United States, and their educational and career paths had veered away from the family’s founding business. By the early 1980s, the Zalatimos were giving serious consideration to selling the shop.[16]

 

Abdallah Zalatimo, a member of  the family’s fifth generation, was born in the 1960s and grew up in Pennsylvania. Graduating school with a marketing degree, he started a promising career in the field. At the age of 23, he resisted the idea of selling the business back home, considering it equivalent to “selling his family’s name.”[17] With the aim of reviving their legacy, he developed a plan to expand the business beyond the borders of Palestine.

 

Well into the 1980s, Abdallah’s 85-year-old grandfather was still running the original shop. Abdallah visited him for three months to learn the recipes and craft. [18] In 1986, he established the first Zalatimo shop outside Jerusalem, in Amman, Jordan; under the name Zalatimo Sweets Company, he hired 15 employees.[19] Abdallah’s choice of Amman was a well-considered one, as he successfully targeted an existing market segment of Palestinians who had been driven out of the country to neighboring Jordan in 1948 and 1967, and who no longer had access to the original sweets shop that was symbolic of the “taste of Palestine.”[20] In 1996,[21] Abdallah’s uncle Mohammed Wael Zalatimo founded Zalatimo Brothers for Sweets[22] — known simply as Zalatimo Brothers — which also became popular in Jordan and around the Middle East.

TODAY

Today, Zalatimo Sweets Company operates a network of around a dozen outlets across the MENA region, with numerous international importers.[23] The business is run by members of the family’s fifth generation, and members of the sixth generation have joined as well.[24] In 2018, Zalatimo Sweets generated $11 million in revenue. [25] The chain exports around 250 tons of sweets annually,[26] and its biggest outlet in the West is Walmart, where Zalatimo products are sold in 230 branches – an achievement made possible thanks to the Palestinian and Middle Eastern diasporic communities in the United States.[27]

 

The main shop in Jerusalem shut down in 2019 due to the security situation,[28] and its fate remains unclear. Other Zalatimo family members currently operate similar shops in Jerusalem’s Shu’afat and Beit Hanina neighborhoods.

Notes

Photo Credit: Store sign of Zalatimo's original shop in Souk Khan El-Zeit, Jerusalem, Palestine in the 1930s. Image credit: Ahmad Zalatimo

[1]“Zalatimo Sweets” Since 1860 – Dima Al Sharif. https://www.dimasharif.com/zalatimo-sweets/. 14 May. 2022

[2] Zalatimo Sweets Company Profile: Funding & Investors | PitchBook. https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/110944-27. 14 May. 2022

[3] Exact date unclear

[4] عائلة زلاطيمو – القدس. https://rabettah.net/faces/family/1884/عائلةزلاطيمو. 14 May. 2022

[5] عائلة زلاطيمو – القدس. https://rabettah.net/faces/family/1884/عائلةزلاطيمو. 14 May. 2022

[6] عائلة زلاطيمو – القدس. https://rabettah.net/faces/family/1884/عائلةزلاطيمو. 14 May. 2022

[7] About Us. https://zalatimosweets.com/about-us. 14 May. 2022

[8] About Us. https://zalatimosweets.com/about-us. 14 May. 2022

[9] “Zalatimo Sweets” Since 1860 – Dima Al Sharif. https://www.dimasharif.com/zalatimo-sweets/. 14 May. 2022

[10] “حلويات زلاطيمو.. حكاية نجاح ممتدة منذ 1860.” حلويات زلاطيمو.. حكاية نجاح ممتدة منذ 1860, https://jormulti.blogspot.com/2012/03/1860.html. 14 May. 2022

[11] “Zalatimo Sweets” Since 1860 – Dima Al Sharif. https://www.dimasharif.com/zalatimo-sweets/. 14 May. 2022

[12] How an Old School Jordanian Sweets Maker Made It to Walmart | Fortune. https://fortune.com/2019/07/19/how-an-old-school-jordanian-sweets-maker-made-it-to-walmart/. 14 May. 2022

[13] م. أحمد زلاطيمو : ” ” الأخوين زلاطيمو للحلويات ” الريادة والتطور في صناعة الحلويات والشوكولا :: الوقائع الإخبارية. https://alwakaai.com/article/360312. 14 May. 2022

[14] م. أحمد زلاطيمو : ” ” الأخوين زلاطيمو للحلويات ” الريادة والتطور في صناعة الحلويات والشوكولا :: الوقائع الإخبارية. https://alwakaai.com/article/360312. 14 May. 2022

[15] About Us. https://zalatimosweets.com/about-us. 14 May. 2022

[16] How an Old School Jordanian Sweets Maker Made It to Walmart | Fortune. https://fortune.com/2019/07/19/how-an-old-school-jordanian-sweets-maker-made-it-to-walmart/. 14 May. 2022

[17] How an Old School Jordanian Sweets Maker Made It to Walmart | Fortune. https://fortune.com/2019/07/19/how-an-old-school-jordanian-sweets-maker-made-it-to-walmart/. 14 May. 2022

[18] How an Old School Jordanian Sweets Maker Made It to Walmart | Fortune. https://fortune.com/2019/07/19/how-an-old-school-jordanian-sweets-maker-made-it-to-walmart/. 14 May. 2022

[19] م. أحمد زلاطيمو : ” ” الأخوين زلاطيمو للحلويات ” الريادة والتطور في صناعة الحلويات والشوكولا :: الوقائع الإخبارية. https://alwakaai.com/article/360312. 14 May. 2022

[20] How an Old School Jordanian Sweets Maker Made It to Walmart | Fortune. https://fortune.com/2019/07/19/how-an-old-school-jordanian-sweets-maker-made-it-to-walmart/. 14 May. 2022

[21] ZALATIMO-BROTHERS-FOR-SWEETS-AHMAD-ZALATIMO—PARTNERS-CO – Company Credit Report – Jordan – Mirainform.Com. https://mirainform.com/View-Reports/ZALATIMO-BROTHERS-FOR-SWEETS-AHMAD-ZALATIMO—PARTNERS-CO/Jordan/1596456. 14 May. 2022

[22] “الحاج محمد زلاطيمو.. مؤسس شركة الاخوين زلاطيمو في ذمة الله.” مدار الساعة, https://alsaa.net/article/112299/الحاجمحمدزلاطيمومؤسس. 14 May. 2022

[23] ZalatimoBrothers. https://zalatimo.com/en/our-history. 14 May. 2022

[24] الأردن ١٦| دخلنا مطبخ زلاطيمو لأول مرة.. أشهر محل حلويات بالأردن.. وصدمنا من اللي شفناه جوه! Directed by محمود سعد, 2022. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTC6x84SENQ. 14 May. 2022

[25] How an Old School Jordanian Sweets Maker Made It to Walmart | Fortune. https://fortune.com/2019/07/19/how-an-old-school-jordanian-sweets-maker-made-it-to-walmart/. 14 May. 2022

[26] About Us. https://zalatimosweets.com/about-us. 14 May. 2022

[27] How an Old School Jordanian Sweets Maker Made It to Walmart | Fortune. https://fortune.com/2019/07/19/how-an-old-school-jordanian-sweets-maker-made-it-to-walmart/. 14 May. 2022

[28] Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/Baronesstapuzina/posts/his-makes-me-sad-but-is-what-happens-a-lot-when-there-is-no-one-to-take-over-fro/10156765630534317/. 14 May. 2022

To cite this article please use:

“Zalatimo Sweets” Family Business Histories Research Project, New York University Abu Dhabi and Tharawat Family Business Forum, 20 Mar. 2023, familybusinesshistories.org/spotlights/zalatimo-sweets