Product approval is a real timeline, so start it early
Anything eaten, drunk, applied to skin or claimed to affect health goes through registration before it can be sold. Food product registration runs through the municipality system in the emirate you operate in, and health products and supplements sit with the federal health authority.
The process is not adversarial, but it is document-heavy: ingredient lists, laboratory analysis, artwork, country of origin. The single most common delay is artwork that does not match the labelling requirements and has to be reprinted. Get the label reviewed before you print thousands of them.
Labelling rules are specific and checked
Arabic labelling is required, and the requirements cover more than translation: ingredient declaration, storage conditions, production and expiry dates in the accepted format, and the origin. Health claims are constrained, and a claim that is fine in another market can block registration here.
Treat the label as part of the product, designed against the rules, not as packaging artwork you localise afterwards. Brands that do it the other way round pay for two print runs.
The same applies to shelf life. Dates have to be presented in an accepted format and the remaining life on arrival matters to a retailer, who will refuse stock that is too close to expiry to sell through. That is a supply chain decision disguised as a labelling one.
Retail, delivery, or your own channel
Getting into a supermarket chain means listing fees, a distributor's margin, and payment terms measured in months. It is real distribution and it is expensive, and a brand with thin margin can win the listing and still lose money on it.
Delivery platforms are faster to reach and take a substantial commission. Your own channel keeps the margin and makes you responsible for demand, which is the hardest part. Most brands here end up using all three, and the mistake is not choosing badly, it is failing to know the true contribution of each.
The founder question that actually matters
Can you make the second sale to the same person? Consumer businesses in this market are won on repeat purchase, because the cost of the first sale is high whichever channel you use.
That points at consumables over durables, and at a product someone finishes and replaces. A brand whose customer buys once is buying its growth forever, and in a market with this much competition for attention, that is a treadmill rather than a business.
It also changes what you measure. First-order margin tells you very little on its own; what matters is the margin across a customer's first year, and whether you know it. Brands here that can answer that question raise money and brands that cannot tend to describe their growth in impressions.