This Dubai-Born Candy Brand Swapped Sugar Syrups for Dates

CairoScene

2 days ago

This Dubai-Born Candy Brand Swapped Sugar Syrups for Dates
In a market saturated with artificial ingredients and louder-than-thou packaging, Good Candy Co is made from dates, coloured with fruit, and approved by the toughest critics of all—children.
There comes a time in every woman's life when she realises she's been lied to.
Not in a Greek-tragedy, thunder-clap kind of way. No, it's quieter than that. Slipperier. It comes in soft suggestions and hand-me-down wisdoms dressed as facts. It starts with someone saying 'you'll just know when it's love' (you won't), or 'it gets better after 25' (it doesn't), or 'just drink some lemon water, your skin will clear' (justice for lemon water; it tried its best). The lies are small enough to swallow, but frequent enough to choke on. Eventually, you stop flinching. You just let them pass through, like background noise at a dinner table.
And while most of these lies are manageable, laughable even, some are more sinister. Like the ones we've collectively swallowed about food. About what's 'normal.' About what counts as a treat. I mean, an entire generation of us grew up thinking candy had to taste like chemicals and childhood trauma. Now, I say all this not as a mother (I am 23, my most dependent relationship is with my espresso machine), but as someone who has watched enough mums in her life do mental gymnastics in front of a snack shelf, trying to figure out what's "healthy" enough to by. Thankfully, one of those mums finally decided to do something about it.
A lifelong health enthusiast, Rabail Ali had just moved to Dubai, and found herself struggling to do what most parents do—feed her children. She spent too much time squinting at ingredient lists, trying to decode what exactly was inside the treats she was handing her little ones. Finally, when she couldn't find any alternatives on supermarket shelves, she rolled up her sleeves and started Good Candy Co: a Dubai-born, date-sweetened, clean-label confectionery brand designed with kids in mind.
'It's not like you can stop kids from having candy—it's part of childhood," Rabail Ali shares with SceneNowUAE. "But you also don't just want to hand them a packet of glucose syrup dyed with something no one can pronounce.'
And that's exactly what ushered Ali down this candy-making path.
Armed with motherly instinct and years of experience in the Canadian chocolate and snacking industries, Ali began her journey by experimenting with healthy alternatives. First in her kitchen. Then in her newly acquired production facility. Her test audience was as brutal as they were loyal—her children. 'Kids are honest. If it doesn't taste right, they'll tell you.'
Her experiments weren't just about flavour. Texture mattered. Chew mattered. The feel in the mouth, the rip of the pouch, the look on a playdate friend's face when they tried something unfamiliar—it all counted.
'We knew we wanted to be a 100% clean label. Our date sugar comes from a very specific type of date. Even the colours we use are extracted from fruits and vegetables."
Once she had nailed the formula, she knew she needed a name.
As she sat at a coffee shop in Dubai, scribbling down potential contenders, she knew she didn't want to try to be clever. She didn't want to coin a term, claim a mood, or brand a lifestyle. She just wanted to make candy that was good. Not good in the moralistic sense. Not as a self-righteous stand-in for childhood treats. Just...good. And so she wrote it down: Good Candy Co. That was it.
'I didn't want to complicate it,' Ali tells SceneNowUAE, a year into the journey. 'Everything these days is so overthought. I just wanted people to know what it is—candy that's good.'
Months later, Good Candy Co launched with two mixed-flavour packs: fruity bears and sour stars. By then, her kids had become full-blown taste testers, marketing evangelists, and quality control. Incredibly proud of their mum, they'd drag her to the candy aisle every time they set foot in a supermarket trying to find the Good Candy packs.
That in-store placement wasn't incidental. Good Candy Co was selected for Spinneys' New Business Incubator, an initiative that gives emerging brands retail support, supply chain mentorship, and priority shelf space. 'The support has been amazing. But I also knew what I wanted from day one. I didn't just want to be another candy brand. I wanted a sense of mission, a sense of community.'
Community, in this case, includes both the city and the consumer. Dubai really is fertile ground for experimentation. People are open. They want new things. 'It's not just about taste—it's the whole experience. The feel of the packaging, the reseal, the smell, the flavour.'
In less than a year, Good Candy Co has gone from kitchen experiment to stocked on shelves across the UAE. Now, they're coming out with three new single-flavour packs, with many more down the pipeline. It seems that what really makes this particular bar stand out from the candy crowd is one simple fact: Ali is still thinking like a parent with a mission. One batch at a time, one new flavour at a time, one curious customer at a time. And, she has never lost sight of what really matters, the very reason she started this whole thing in the first place—her kids.
'My kids think I'm Willy Wonka,' she smiles. "I think that means I've made it."