The story
Deem Al Bassam is a Saudi food entrepreneur with a marketing degree from the American University in Dubai. She began her culinary career in 2008 by opening the Switch restaurant in Bahrain. With her friend Amal Al Marri, with whom she had worked in art and design, she launched SALT in 2014 as a food truck on Dubai's Kite Beach. According to the Founding MENA short, the pair rejected advice that a restaurant needed a prestigious mall location, chose beaches and parks instead, and pressed Dubai's regulators repeatedly before a trailer was permitted. They kept the truck's location hidden and let customers find it through a single Instagram hashtag, and the #FindSalt campaign built a loyal following known as Salters. Al Bassam and Al Marri grew the Independent Food Company around SALT, which develops original concepts rather than franchises and includes Switch, Parker's, Grind, Somewhere and Public. In December 2024 Somewhere opened at Harrods in London.
By the numbers
Appearances
On Founding MENA
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