From childhood memories of her parents’ Baltimore restaurant, to starting her own food business as an adult, Ayeshah Abuelhiga has lived and breathed the saying “Food brings people together.”
Abuelhiga founded Mason Dixie Foods in 2014 after 15 years in the tech and automotive industry. What started as a Washington, D.C. pop-up shop has blossomed into a Baltimore-based comfort food company, which was named on the Baltimore Business Journal’s Fast 50 list for 2023, and the top 15% of the Inc. 5000 list.
But the path to culinary success was not without challenges, starting with her parents’ own venture when Abuelhiga was a child.
Her parents, who were Palestinian-Israeli and Korean, both immigrated to the United States when they were teenagers. Abuelhiga’s maternal grandfather was a real estate entrepreneur in Korea before he came to the United States, and connected with other Korean entrepreneurs, later owning his own corner store and a dry-cleaning business where her mother worked.
Abuelhiga’s mother also worked at a fried chicken shop in Lexington Market, where she soon grasped the skills to fry food.
“My parents were both from very different cultures and they did not like each other’s cuisine,” Abuelhiga said. “So the only thing they would agree on was American comfort foods. So like fried chicken saves the day, multiple days, when it came time to making dinner decisions.”
Her parents, along with other immigrant families, pooled their money together to open a carry-out restaurant.
At home and at the store, her mother became a master fry cook.
“She didn’t grow up eating that food,” Abuelhiga said, “but she fell in love with it by working here in Baltimore, and being in the energy of Lexington Market and feeling that.”
People from all walks of life and cultural backgrounds entered her parents’ carryout restaurant in what is now Charles Village. They all had something in common: their love for soul food.
“They kind of located there because it was a bit of a food desert,” Abuelhiga said. “Back then Hopkins hadn’t really encroached that far down.”
Business was doing well, but issues with the arrangement caused them to lose the business, and move into Section 8 housing in southwest Baltimore when Abuelhiga was about 10 years old.
It was the trials of being a first-generation immigrant family in America that pushed Abuelhiga’s parents to emphasize the importance of education. They did not want her to become a business owner herself.
“I think in their minds, they thought there is no way to really become wealthy through business because they have so many obstacles where they’re financing things, everything on their own. They couldn’t qualify for traditional bank financing. They didn’t have additional wealth established in America,” Abuelhiga said.
So with a push to have a career in another field, Abuelhiga moved an hour south to Washington, D.C. and attended George Washington University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in international affairs and geography.
After graduating Abuelhiga worked in the tech and automotive industry for 15 years.
As she climbed high on the corporate ladder, Abuelhiga began to feel like she hit the ceiling.
“I just was not going to be the VP or higher, because there are tons of older gentlemen ahead of me. I’d be stuck in the same job for 30 years,” said Abuelhiga. “Here’s a common, I think, millennial thing. I hear a lot of my friends and colleagues have the same issue. Right? They were such quick climbers that they just didn’t want to wait any longer, and I think I fell in that same hole.”
She also felt a sense of imposter syndrome.
“There was an energy around my family being busy because they were making money. And going to a corporate job, clocking in and clocking out, yeah, of course, I was well compensated. That wasn’t the issue,” Abuelhiga said. “But I almost felt like I didn’t really earn it.”
Becoming an entrepreneur, something her family warned her against, echoed through her mind so much that she quit her job in the automotive industry and started her own business.
“Working for myself was really appealing, right? Because at that point I’m like: only I can control my destiny in my work. The more I put in, the direct output is exactly what I put in,” Abuelhiga said.
In Washington D.C., she frequented soul food spots. Though the food was good, Abuelhiga said she could taste that the ingredients were not fresh.
She also wanted to restore the nutritional value that had been stripped from many soul food dishes.
In 2014, Abuelhiga started Mason Dixie Foods after receiving funding from 350 sponsors on Kickstart, a global crowd-funding platform. Initially, her business focused on biscuits, one of her favorite comfort foods.
The biscuits Abuelhiga ordered from distributors were made using processed ingredients, so she shifted to making her own recipe from scratch.
Abuelhiga’s first business endeavor, a pop-up shop, was a hit. Customers lined up across multiple streets and she ran out of food twice. The next day, she and her team doubled up on food, and still sold out.
Abuelhiga and her COO, Ross Perkins, started vacuum-sealing, freezing, and selling the dough after loyal customers asked to buy it to make biscuits at home.
Word spread quickly about Abuelhiga’s food, and soon Mason Dixie Foods launched its first products in Whole Foods.
“I wanted to make sure that as we grew, we really created a concept that it was welcoming for everyone, and that anyone could access quality food and realize the benefits of it, even if it’s fried,” Abuelhiga said. “We made sure that whenever the customers came, we educated them about the price and the ingredient quality and why it’s different.”
From there, Abuelhiga opened a restaurant in northeast Washington, D.C. that prospered until the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and landlord issues strained the business and caused it to shut down.
“Our best customers were our neighbors,” Abuelhiga said. “It was really, really sad when we had to close it. There were some structural issues with the building that basically forced out of code and our landlord wouldn’t comply.”
Abuelhiga started to focus more on the frozen food industry as her brand continued to flourish. The office space in Washington D.C. went from two employees to 10, and things were expensive in the city.
But Perkins had an idea to move the company to Baltimore.
“When we started looking at Baltimore, it was still very affordable. It was still very accessible to D.C.” Abuelhiga said. “I wanted it to be a place with great salaries we were able to afford and it could actually mean that our team would buy their first homes and create some generational wealth for themselves as well.”
She added, “That’s what I love about Baltimore to this day. It’s still a very affordable city to really grow your roots, and it’s ever-changing. And it always is young, because we have so many students coming in and out.”
Today, Mason Dixie Foods produces an array of flavors of biscuits, waffles, breakfast sandwiches, and scones. The company’s products are sold online and in chain grocery stores including Giant, Harris Teeters, Whole Foods, and Mom’s Organic Market, and the business is constantly growing.
The key to running a business is planning, according to Abuelhiga.
“I think you have to always figure out, if this doesn’t happen, then what if this does happen, then what?” Abuelhiga said. “A successful business owner always is thinking about the next step, always thinking about what is that holistically entails, whether it’s financially, whether it’s operationally, talent-wise, customer base-wise, marketing. Your mind’s always got to focus on everything all at once, which is a hard thing to do.”
But another business owner quality she stresses is to be passionate.
“Your whole team feeds off of that energy,” Abuelhiga said. “You smile and you say ‘We got this,’ and somebody always comes up with a great idea.”
