I started Aliya’s Foods in 1999 with my wife, Anis. We make ready-to-eat Indian meals under a brand called Chef Bombay, which we started selling in the U.S. in the early 2000s. We saw a gap at the time in the American market; Indian options were limited and just didn’t taste authentic. But we knew we had a great product, and this was also just around the time that interest in global flavours and healthy convenience foods was really taking off. The U.S. soon became our main market, and we started selling in big supermarket chain stores like Kroger and H-E-B down there, though we’ve never left our home in Edmonton. In 2021 we moved from a 42,000 square-foot facility to a 100,000 square-foot one, where we now produce around 80,000 meals per day. About 85 per cent of all our products go to the U.S.

When Trump first announced tariffs, I thought, You must be kidding. It wasn’t just that the U.S. was our main market; we also sourced a ton of ingredients from the U.S.: chicken, peas, carrots, potatoes, onions and more. Everything we make was vulnerable. We did some scenario planning and figured out that the tariffs could end up costing us up to $75,000 each month. Our management team—me, Anis, my daughter........

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