Rabat – Before it became the “Mina” brand found on shelves at Whole Foods Market, it began in a Casablanca kitchen in the 1950s, where Mina first learned to cook. 

She later refined her craft in Paris on a scholarship before relocating to New York City. 

Decades after launching her catering business in the United States, her son, Fouad Kallamni, co-founded the Mina brand in 2010.

The brand did not launch with a full pantry lineup, it launched with one product only: harissa. 

For Fouad Kallamni, it was a calculated bet. With Moroccan cuisine still relatively unfamiliar to many American consumers, he said the company chose not to introduce its full range of flavors all at once, opting instead for a more gradual approach. 

Harissa worked as an entry point because it fits into a category Americans already understood and loved which is sauces and condiments.

The expansion since then has followed the same logic: patient, sequenced, and never all at once.

Tagine and Shakshuka simmering sauces came next. Mina engineered a compressed version of a dish that traditionally takes a dozen plus ingredients and hours of simmering to fit the North American lifestyle that favored efficiency and swiftly.

Today, the brand offers a variety of products such as preserved lemons, olives, sardines, and culinary argan oil. 

What holds the whole portfolio together is authenticity. Nothing goes to mass production unless Mina, Kallamni’s mother, tastes it and confirms that it matches what she would make at home. 

The sourcing part of the business tells a similar story. Mina buys directly from family farms in Morocco, including its own olive groves, through what the company describes as collaborative harvesting programs that create local employment in underprivileged communities. 

It is a supply chain built on relationship rather than commodity purchasing. Still, the 10% tariff on Moroccan imports remains an important cost pressure on that model, a reminder that even a values-driving supply chain runs through trade policy.

Mina’s family recipes became a successful and repeatable production standard that preserves authenticity even among North American consumers. 

Mina’s love for cooking continues to serve not only her small family but a mass audience that restocks her family’s product regularly.