Dubai – Brazil’s Cintia da Silva founded Jade’s Restaurant in Dubai late last year. Experienced in the halal barbecue business, the entrepreneur planned the UAE-based restaurant to be a social business, too. Behind the initiative, there’s a cause Silva is personally invested.
Based in the United Kingdom for 25 years, she has always worked in the hospitality industry and ran restaurant chains like Rodízio Brasil and Nabrasa, which is focused on halal barbecue.
Some years ago, though, she decided to go back to studying and invest in another area. “I took an integrative course on homeopathy and nutrition. When I started it, my daughter was in a delicate moment of health, but I didn’t know what was the problem yet. Only when she was diagnosed with anorexia, I learned about it. It was a struggle – I stopped working for a year to take care of her at home. I saw the whole process, and I didn’t agree with the treatment in the UK. Seeing all that pain, I focused my studies on eating disorders,” she said.
Upon fishing the course, Silva decided to spread the knowledge she acquired on the disorder. “In one of my projects, I developed a treatment for anorexia. Now I want to publish it so that the treatment is donated for the government to use it, as [London’s healthcare system] treat the disorder a physical and not a mental [illness]. So they explained that I had to start a charity,” she said.
Through the charity, the Brazilian restaurateur plans on making the treatment accessible for free. Since her experience has always been in the food industry, her charity operates in the same sector. “I see that the pain of the people with eating disorders is the same of those who starve, either by loss of appetite or lack of food. So I established Jade’s Soul Mission to fight hunger and anorexia,” she said.
To raise funds for the charity, she brought to Dubai the project of a restaurant that doubled as a venue for hosting informational events on eating disorders and eventually could operate as a food bank to fight hunter.
With the project in the UAE underway, she and her former business partner dissolved the partnership of the restaurant chain NaBrasa in the UK. She kept the restaurant in Dubai with the purpose of making it a social initiative, too. “My reason for being here is growing the organization,” she said.
The businesswoman aims to make Jade’s in Dubai a success case to showcase to the UK government. “When the restaurant is up and running, I’ll submit the project to the UK’s Charity Commission showing that it’s stable. And they will contact Dubai’s government to start a branch here. Then it’ll be [between] the UK’s and the UAE’s government,” she said.
The next step, she says, is transferring the knowledge to universities, which would offer the treatment created by her for free.
For Silva, a benefit of establishing this initiative in Dubai is that the emirate welcomes new businesspeople, besides having a stable economic situation. But, she says, one of the local rules is that if the institution has ties with the state, the government would take care of it all, which she refused. “So I took over myself, as a business. But declaring that I distribute its income to institutions, as long as it’s declared,” she said.
More information
With the business running since November 2022, the entrepreneur is now ready to promote the initiative and open the doors of the restaurant for debates on eating disorders. “It’s a problem that people don’t talk about enough, and it raises a lot of questions in the life of those who suffer from it due to the lack of information. Now I’m really getting in touch with people, and we’ll have a day every talk to talk about anorexia in our venue. We still can’t operate in the medical area, but I can hold events. It’s my dream project, but we’re still starting it,” she said.
She points out the importance that the whole society understands the disease, which also involves mental health. “As parents, we sometimes think it’s a teenage thing, but it isn’t. Now we see that what my daughter needed was an actual medical treatment. It’s an issue for the whole family to deal with, not just the person,” she said.
Exhibition area
Jade’s Restaurant is located within a hotel chain in the district of Deira in Dubai. There she saw another way to raise funds for the institution. Seeing how Brazilian brands seek to enter the emirate, Silva decided she would allocate a section of restaurant to be a showcase for Brazilian goods in Dubai.
The businesswoman is part of the Women from Brazil Group in Dubai, which has encouraged innovation. “A friend of mine gave me the idea to visit Gulfood and find Brazilian firms that’d like to showcase their goods in our space. All I’m trying to do is find new ways to quickly register a branch of the charity I have in England with the government here,” she said.
In the exhibition area, the businesswoman focuses on food brands, and she sought connections in Gulfood last February. “But I’m willing to look at other possibilities. The idea is that people can have a first notion of how their goods are perceived in the UAE, so that they can decide if they should expand their investment,’ she said.
Jade’s Brazilian Restaurant
2nd floor, Wyndham Dubai Deira, Dubai Gold Souk Extension, Sherina Plaza
United Arab Emirates
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
