Yasmeen built her gourmet chocolate company, @AlYasmeen sweets Company from the ground up, now she’s leveraging USAID support to become stronger than ever.

As a young, ambitious entrepreneur with a taste for fine chocolates, Yasmeen established her company as a homebased business in 2010. Her focus on quality ingredients and refined confectionary methods, as well as her sleek marketing under the brand name BOON CHOCO, made the business a breakout success. Yasmeen opened a small production facility, hired and trained a team of chocolate makers, and took on large, customized orders for weddings, corporate events, and for export to gourmet food stores in Israel.

The growing firm survived COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 but needed to make critical investments to recover its competitive market position. The SMART Project agreed to support these investments with a cost-shared Recovery Plan, which includes replacing equipment such as chocolate processing, cooling, and packaging machines through an in-kind grant.