Although Mohamad Fakih claims he “can’t fry an egg,” he nevertheless brought the mom-and-pop Paramount shawarma shop out of bankruptcy and grew it into the fastest-growing Middle Eastern restaurant chain in North America.
Fakih’s food industry journey began with a spur-of-the-moment investment of $250,000 to the failing business. The business lost the money in a week. But Fakih turned around and bought the struggling shop himself.
“We shop for two families,” Fakih’s mother would say, because although his family had little, in war-torn Lebanon there was always someone who had less. “She would drop by and give [a refugee family] their share of the groceries,” Fakih recalls. “Giving to others was part of our everyday lives.”
With this mentality, Fakih has used the successful growth of Paramount Fine Foods to fund charities in Toronto and overseas. But even these endeavors do not feel like enough to the businessman and philanthropist. “I want to do more, and I just don’t think there’s enough time,” he explains.
From gemologist to restauranteur by total accident
Fakih grew up in Lebanon, but lived in Syria and Italy as well before finally settling in Canada. With an education in gemonlogy, he ran a successful jewelry business in Mississauga, Canada for many years. Then, Fakih’s wife sent him out to get baklava. While ringing up the transaction, the small bakery’s owner asked him for a $250,000 investment.
“Part of the money was borrowed,” Fakih remembers. “The other part was everything I’ve made in my life.” Within a week, the restaurant lost all the money and then some. This prompted Fakih to take over the business and try his hand at food service. The sales grew from $50,000 a month to that much a week in only a year. Soon, Paramount represented not only restaurants, but a packaged food brand, a halal meat shop, and a Lebanese fast-food concept.
Community before business, for Mohamad Fakih
“I grew up in a community that believed the more you give, the more you get back, and that you’ll never lose by giving back to the community,” says Fakih. “It’s always a profitable equation.”
Fakih uses Paramount’s success to fuel significant humanitarian work which, in turn, creates more support, both social and financial, for the business. As someone who grew up in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, Fakih has first-hand experience with forced migration, war, and being “hungry” for a better life.
He partnered with the UN Refugee Agency in Canada to form an initiative to hire five refugees at each of his restaurants. “You don’t only help them change their life,” Fakih explains. “It’s actually beneficial to the company, beneficial to the country entirely. They want to overperform.”
The company employs over 2000 people with locations in Canada, the US, the UK, Dubai, Pakistan, and Lebanon. “Happiness is more than a bank statement, an asset, or a bottom line,” says Paramount’s official website. “That is why it is our goal to donate 2% of sales to established charitable organizations in Ontario.”
Fakih has been a UNCHR ambassador since 2018, and was named as the 2019 Business Person of the Year by the Mississauga Board of Trade.
“I wanted to change the world one piece of jewellery at a time, and now I’m changing it one plate of shawarma at a time,” he says. In addition to providing opportunities in the community and funding relief effors, Paramount has sponsored hotel rooms for Toronto’s homeless during the cold Canadian winters.
Mohamad Fakih leads by example
Fakih’s family helps him with the business as well: his wife and three children. “I get them involved in my work and they love what we do together,” he explains to CPA Canada. “It’s the Ikea syndrome: they make you build the furniture yourself, and you love it more because of that.”
The mayor of Mississauga gifted Fakih a key to the city, a gesture which although symbolic, reaches far beyond a simple acknowledgement of economic importance. “For the city to do that means, ‘we love you, we trust you, we appreciate you and everyone else who came to Canada like you,’” says Fakih. “Not like me in name or religion, but like me in general, with the circumstances that brought me here.”
Visit Paramount’s official website here.
