São Paulo – Every day, the 53-year-old Catia Ramos caters to customers at Ono Boutique de Carnes Halal. Located in the Mooca neighborhood on the east side of São Paulo, the butcher shop carries halal beef and poultry – halal means made in accordance with the rules of Islam and fit for Muslim consumption – as well as other 600 food items, most of which are typical ingredients of Arab cuisine.
“Besides the beef, which is Angus, and the poultry, our best-selling products are bread, garlic paste, sweets, sfiha, and stuffed eggplant. We source these items from Arab countries such as Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Palestine,” says Catia.
To cater to all its customers, the shop will also deliver across the city as well as in other municipalities in the state of São Paulo.
“We do lots of deliveries across Guarulhos, São Bernardo do Campo, and São Caetano do Sul, where you have Muslim communities, but we have also delivered to other states, like Santa Catarina, Pará, Rio de Janeiro, Paraná, and Minas Gerais,” she says.
“We will deliver no matter what the item’s price is. The only thing that changes, and customers are made aware of it, is the shipping cost depending on the distance. We focus on providing differentiated, personalized service to cater to everyone.”
The shop has never exported product, but according to Catia, there are plans to that end. Increasing sales to supermarkets and restaurants is also a part of the plans, although there is no timeline in place for that to happen.
Catia runs the meat shop, which opened in August 2024, alongside her partners Ricardo Ramos, who is her husband, and Hassan Ali Abdullah, a Brazilian-born Lebanese descendant. Catia had been in business as a butcher for over 20 years before meeting Hassan.
“Me and my husband are both butchers. We were running our own business when we met Hassan. He had experience in selling halal meat, and he was looking for professionals to him and start a boutique halal food shop,” Catia recalls.
The idea came to fruition in early 2023, and the size of the trio’s newly found headquarters came as a surprise. “To take advantage of all the space we had, we added new SKUs, and that was how we got to the 600 different products we have on offer right now.”
A butcher by trade
Catia inherited her job from her father. A native of Portugal, he moved to Brazil, started a family, and worked as a butcher his entire life. Catia went to college for Interior Design and worked in that for a while, but she ultimately embraced her father’s line of work.
“Even though I inherited it, I really enjoy my profession. Nowadays, as a partner at the shop, I will mostly take orders from clients rather than actually cut the meat, but I will go and do that whenever I have to.”
Catia has been in the business for more than two decades and says adapting to the new target demographic was easy. “The thing that changes when you talk about catering to the Arab public is the names of meat cuts, which are different than those in Brazil, but I learned those quite fast. The actual servicing of customers is the same as in the other places I’ve worked at,” she explains.
The butcher serves Arabs, Arab descendants, Muslims, and even non-Muslim and non-Arab Brazilians who just enjoy halal food on a daily basis, and she usually handles all incoming shoppers. The sole exception is customers who speak nothing but Arabic. Whenever her partner Hassan is not around, she relies on two employees who are fluent speakers of the language.
Read more:
The tech face of the Muslim consumer
By Rebecca Vettore, in collaboration with ANBA
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
