‘I started my business in my parents’ shed and now have a shop in Birmingham Bullring'

Sweet Joe’s is a popular name around Birmingham these days.

The cookie dough company recently opened a store in the Bullring and Grand Central following its success in recent years across the city.

After completing a degree in biological forensic sciences at Coventry University, the founder of Sweet Joe’s - Birmingham-born Ammar Saleem, had the idea of setting up his own cookie dough company while working at a pizza restaurant.

He said: “After university, I was struggling to get a job because of the post 2008 recession, and no one wanted to touch graduates with a barge poll at that time.

“So I decided to get a job at a pizza parlour with a friend, and we wanted to put cookie dough on the menu. As a student I was living on Pizza Huts, and cookie dough was a staple during my student years. 

“I’ve got a massive sweet tooth. When I was going to desert parlours one of the things that frustrated me was that there was always only three flavours and nothing else. I found a supplier in Sutton Coldfield on Boldmere high street.”

Ammar said his cookie dough began to outsell the pizzas which was a ‘eureka moment’. He bought a second hand freezer and set up his company from his parents shed in Bordesley Green with just £700.

After working for two years as a medical sales rep, Ammar said the job paid well but didn’t fulfil his ambitions. He said: “I left that and began working for a local charity and building this business up – I then left the charity and went full time at the business in 2015.”

After ‘taking the plunge’ and getting a start-up loan in 2016, today Sweet Joe’s manufacture the cookie dough at a unit in Bordesley Green. They bake and cook at the Bordesley unit and sell to wholesalers and ice cream manufacturers, and they will soon be launching a product in one of the UK’s big four supermarkets.

The Sweet Joe’s products include freshly baked, six ounce cookies - incluidng eight different types of cookies: four on a set menu and four flavours that change every week with new flavours.

Sweet Joe’s has grown massively during the intervening years, with their new store opening in the Bullring this month.

Today, Ammar says the business is worth around £3 million. 

When asked about the ambitions for Sweet Joe’s in the future, he said he wants to continue making Sweet Joe’s an established brand.

“The vision was always to create a brand that resonated with the consumer. To try to create the Ben and Jerrys of the UK in the cookie dough world – that’s what we’ve wanted to do from day dot.”

See more about Sweet Joe’s on their Instagram page, here