Built by Bilal and his wife, Rafia, with help from their nine children, Delightful Foods is a true family business. Bilal fell in love with baking as a child, watching his mother (a professional cook) in the kitchen and experimenting with his own baking creations in his sister’s Easy-Bake Oven. As a young man in the 1970s, he started selling goods for another baker, but soon realized he should be selling for himself. At the age of 24, he decided to found his own baking company in Oakland. Delightful Foods started with traditional pies and cookies, but by the 1990s Bilal began experimenting with dairy-, egg-, and wheat-free confections, long before “vegan” was a household term. The vegan “No Cookie” is now available in stores nationwide. After emigrating from Ghana, Bilal’s wife, Rafia, joined Delightful Foods and has become the face of the business at farmers markets.