Riyadh · Saudi Culture · Brands
Seventeen years ago I landed in Riyadh for the first time. Everything was new to me: the majlis, the farms, the coffee poured from a dallah, the meswak sticks on the street. My Saudi friends saw none of it. To them it was just life.
I think about that a lot when I walk into Musa & Palm.
In 2019, after a visit to Madinah, Suha Musa decided to build a brand that would carry the spirit of the holy city into a modern gift. Musa is her family name. The palm is the tree that has fed this land for thousands of years.
Six years later, Musa & Palm has branches in Riyadh and Jeddah, a factory and warehouse in Sudair, and an in-house design team, mostly women, who sketch every collection by hand before it becomes a box.
What they make is not really chocolate and dates. It is cultural memory, packaged.
Before photography, wealthy pilgrims going to Hajj hired artists to paint their journey: the camels, Makkah, Madinah, a trip that could take four or six months. Suha's team took those painted Hajj certificates and turned them into the Al Huda collection. You open the box and the past opens with it.
The Bedouin read the stars to know when to plant, when to move their herds, when to travel. They knew the astrolabe centuries before it was called science. The Al Badyah collection follows that journey, down to the instrument itself.
The Al Ard box carries a line from the late poet Prince Badr bin Abdulmohsen: "I am from this land, and this land feeds me dates." If you have ever heard a Saudi quote him, you understand why that sentence belongs on a box.
Even the olive oil has a memory. For decades, Saudi homes bought olive oil in one familiar bottle. Musa & Palm redesigned that bottle for oil from Al Jouf. People pick it up and smile before they know why.
The sourcing goes with the design. Organic farmers in Madinah now grow green tea, chamomile and a herbal blend of Madinah rose, lemon leaves, mint and basil for her. Honey comes from four Saudi apiaries, from Asir in the south to Al Jouf in the north. Jams follow the harvest: Madinah strawberries with basil, pumpkin from Al-Bada'i.
I came to this slowly, not quickly. When I helped open a residential community in Riyadh a couple of years ago, we spent weeks asking ourselves what we would put in the welcome for the families moving in. We wanted something that said "welcome to Saudi Arabia" in a way no hotel welcome pack ever could. Before I had met Suha, I had already been testing an answer. One of my coworkers at the time, Jamil, was from Jeddah. He came to the office one day with a box of mamool his aunt had made at home there. I tried one and could not believe how good it was. I asked him to bring me a few boxes the next time he flew back. They never lasted. We served them to prospects touring the compound, to new residents arriving at the gate, to coworkers from every part of the world who happened to walk past the kitchen. Every single person asked where it was from.
Then I met Suha, and the circle closed in a way I did not see coming. Suha was already a resident of the community. She had moved in before the welcome boxes question was even on my desk. One of the first senior Saudi women to join the community, an entrepreneur building something serious in Saudi culture, hospitality, and food, with heritage woven into every decision she made. I had been looking for the right welcome gift for new residents, and she had been part of the community the whole time. I called her, told her what we were trying to build, and asked if she would design a welcome gift for every family arriving. She said yes. From then on, every new resident opened their door to a box with Suha's hand on it. The reaction was never neutral. The woman who had helped make the community feel like home for herself was now helping it feel like home for everyone else.
A few months ago I drove a client visiting from Dubai around Riyadh. We had ten minutes between stops. I pulled over at a Musa & Palm branch and he bought dates for his wife, who was in Paris that week. A week later he called me. She wanted to meet the founder.
That happens every time I bring someone through those doors. And yet most of the expat executives, hotel managers and corporate gift buyers I meet in Riyadh have never heard of it. The reason is not accident. Suha has refused to put Musa & Palm in any shopping bazaar or discount channel for six years. She has spent that time building the brand slowly, carefully, without a riyal of marketing. If you have never heard of her, that is partly because she has protected the brand on purpose.
I have been in Saudi Arabia seventeen years. In those seventeen years, every time I flew home to Mexico, what did I bring from Saudi? Dates. I know dates. I know what they mean. My friend Amal invited me to her family home in Al-Qassim for my first iftar as a young man, breaking fast at Maghreb in Ramadan with the dates passed around the room first. I know Arabic coffee. I know what it means when it is served to you by someone who has thought about who you are before you walked in.
Here is what I think is going on when a brand like this stays quiet for so long. For many years, Saudi life was beautiful at home and quiet in public. When you grow up that way, you do not always know which parts of your culture the world is waiting to see. Sometimes it takes a foreigner to stop and say: wait, what is this? Tell me the story.
My company is called Manara. In Arabic it means lighthouse. I like to read it the other way around: a house of lights. People, companies and countries all carry a light. Sometimes they forget it is there.
Musa & Palm carries a lot of light. Suha carries a lot of light. The country she comes from is full of it. If you work here, host guests here, send gifts from here, or you are just curious about what the quiet, careful part of Saudi design actually looks like, go. Al Takhassusi or the Diplomatic Quarter. Walk in. Take your time. Try the kahwa. Then come find me and tell me what you thought.
If you speak Arabic, hear Suha tell the full story herself on Richter Talk with Bader Al Essa, in an episode called "How to sell culture in a box."
Suha, this one is for you. I am proud to know you.