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Early Start with Rahel Solomon

Dubai Chocolate Has Exploded In Popularity; U.S. Trade Official: "Tariff Rates Are Pretty Much Set In Stone"; Back To School With The "Parody Principal." Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired August 04, 2025 - 05:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[05:34:35]

MJ LEE, CNN ANCHOR: IHOP is jumping on the Dubai chocolate craze with pancakes that it says are worth over $100. The luxe Dubai chocolate pancakes have pistachio and hazelnut flavors and they're topped by an entire bar of Dubai chocolate, and even real gold flakes. IHOP says the pancakes are worth over $100 but they'll be given away for free to the first 25 diners at three restaurants. And once they're sold out customers can order a simpler version of the dish for $13.00, but that one comes without the gold flakes.

[05:35:11]

Dubai chocolate is sweeping the world after this viral TikTok.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARIA VEHERA, TIKTOKER: (Eating a Dubai chocolate bar.)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: This video has been viewed over 56 million times and seemingly gave the world a taste for the viral treat.

The chunky Dubia chocolate bars are stuffed with a gooey filling of pistachio and pastry dough. And it was first introduced in Dubai in 2021 but now you can find it around the world. The Nuts Factory in New York says it's the first company in the city to make its own version of Dubia chocolate.

So let's speak to the CEO of the Nuts Factory. Din Allall joins me live from New York. Din, so great to see you this morning.

You know, you've said that your store in New York City was the first in the city to make a copycat of the original Dubai chocolate bar, right?

DIN ALLALL, CEO, THE NUTS FACTORY: Yes, good morning.

So, yes, we were the first one last year around June that brought the idea of Dubai chocolate to America. It was my brother that saw it on social media and he kind of like said all right, let's try a version of it. We tried it in a couple of stores, and it was like sold out immediately.

LEE: Um-hum.

ALLALL: And then we started to produce many of them and putting them in all of our stores. It was hard in the beginning to kind of like catch up with the production but quickly we ramped it up. We were sold out all the time. And -- but now we kind of like try to have it for everybody in stock.

LEE: Yeah. I mean, can you just help explain the craze around the Dubai chocolate? What makes it so unique and popular? I guess the fillings inside the chocolate bar are pretty unique.

ALLALL: Yes, that's correct. So the thing our bar is one of the only bars that really has the right texture. Now, we use Belgian chocolate and Italian pistachio cream. We -- everything is handcrafted in New York. And the thing is that you really need to get the texture right. It's going to be more liquidy and when you break it it's kind of like you said -- like gooey and it's not like firm and like a plastering (PH). So many of the bars that are made by machine cannot really get the right texture, and the texture is really what adds to whole experience of the Dubai chocolate.

LEE: Yeah. So your chocolates are all handmade. Walk us through a little bit more of the process of how it's made. Like, how do you get the filling inside the chocolate casing on the outside?

ALLALL: So, yes. So we have the special mold which is -- it's like a thick bar. And I think that's what's unique about it because the traditional bars are usually the thin ones that has very little filling. But this one is like -- kind of like created a whole new experience.

Now -- so we fill up the mold. You need to put it on a vibrating table so you're not going to have any bubbles and that the chocolate is going to have the right thickness. Because if the chocolate is too thick then it's hard to bite and the filling is not right. It's really between the ratio of the chocolate and the filling.

And you fill it up by hand. And that's what makes it the best because when you fill up by machine, which that's like 99 percent of the bars, you will never get the right texture. So you fill it up by hands and then you close the mold with Belgian chocolate. Again, the entire process is by hand. And then also after that you wrap it by hand.

So it's a really long process -- labor intensive process but that's what makes it like so good. And this one can deliver the real Dubai chocolate experience.

LEE: Yeah, and you're saying that texture is really everything.

How many bars can you make in day?

ALLALL: Everything. LEE: Yeah.

ALLALL: So --

LEE: How many bars can you make in a day --

ALLALL: Yeah, that's --

LEE: -- and what's the demand like? I'm also curious what the most popular flavors are these days.

ALLALL: So first off, we make few thousand a day. Well, I guess it depends on the day because it's made by hand so it, you know, depends how the team feel that day.

But yeah, obviously, the most popular flavor is the original milk chocolate, then the second one is like the dark chocolate. You have the smore's birthday cake. The matcha is becoming really popular right now with the -- you know, the matcha by itself is like a very high demand right now and we created a version of a -- of a match Dubai.

[05:40:10]

So those are ally the -- oh, and there is the new one, which is the angel hair, which this one also got crazy viral right now. That when you break it you see all the cotton candy inside. And again, even with this one, 99 percent of the bars just don't have the right ratio, don't have the right texture, and don't have the right cotton candy inside. And it's really -- you really need to get it right and it's not as easy as it seems because there are a lot of versions but it's very hard to really get the recipe right.

LEE: All right, Din Allall. Thank you so much for joining us and for this mouthwatering conversation. I really appreciate it.

ALLALL: Thank you very much.

LEE: President Trump's new tariffs are set to take effect on Thursday as consumers and businesses brace for the impact they will have. What top officials are saying as we begin the week.

Plus, a manhunt in the U.S. state of Montana. Police are searching for a man suspected of shooting and killing four people. The latest just ahead.

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[05:45:40]

LEE: Welcome back. I'm MJ Lee. Here are some of the stories we're watching today.

Texas House Democrats have fled their state in a last ditch effort to fight Republican plans to redraw the state's congressional map. Some have traveled to Illinois, New York, and Boston denying the House the quorum that is needed to advance the redistricting plan. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has threatened these lawmakers with removal from office if they do not return by this afternoon.

And President Trump says he'll name a new commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the next few days. He fired the previous bureau head last week claiming, without evidence, that she had rigged the latest monthly jobs data for political purposes. Economists and lawmakers now fear the White House could manipulate future labor data.

All the workers trapped after a copper mine in Chile partially collapsed have been found dead. This brings the death toll to six. According to authorities the collapse happened after an earthquake struck the region on Thursday. The Chilean prosecutor's office is launching an investigation into the collapse.

America's top trade official says sweeping tariffs announced last week are basically set in stone. President Trump's new trade plan is expected to take effect on Thursday. Most countries will be hit with at least a 10 percent levy on their goods.

CNN's Kevin Liptak is following the latest developments from the White House.

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KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: The message from the White House and from President Trump is that these tariff rates that he's put into motion at the end of last week are very much here to stay, even as he has allowed this grace period before these tariffs take effect, allowing potentially some time for countries to come in and try and negotiate their rates down.

What we've heard from senior economic officials in the administration is that these rates are essentially here to stay. We heard from Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, saying that the rates are pretty much. Kevin Hassett, who is the top economist here at the White House, said that the rates are more or less locked in. Both of them very much backing up this tariff plan even as this threat of potentially higher prices for consumers really starts to set in.

In the days before the president announced these new tariff rates you heard from a number of companies who said that they either had already raised prices or were planning to do so as these tariffs make imports more expensive. That includes Adidas, Procter & Gamble, Black & Decker. Other companies, including Walmart, Hasbro, and Mattel, have all said that they could raise prices as a result of these tariffs.

But certainly, President Trump is very much locked into the strategy. Listen to what he said as he was returning to the White House on Sunday.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm not looking for leverage, I'm looking for fairness. We want reciprocal as much as possible. Sometimes reciprocal would be too much for them to handle because it's -- it would be a much bigger number. But we want to see some reciprocity. We want to see reciprocal wherever we can.

And all I can say is this. Our country will be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars. You just said it. Already we're taking in, you know, billions and billions of dollars. And it was very unfair. The world treated us very unfair.

LIPTAK: Now, one other area to watch on the trade front is China. The president still very much in search of a trade deal with Beijing.

The deadline for those tariffs to take effect was slightly different. August 12 was the date by which the president had said that those new higher tariffs would take effect. But it does now appear likely as if that will be delayed as U.S. officials continue to hammer out some of the specifics with Chinese officials on this deal. American officials have said that those discussions are going very well, suggesting that they're making progress and that they don't think that deadline of August 12 is necessarily operable at this point.

Of course, the other main story that has been dominating White House economic circles this weekend was the president's decision to dismiss the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics last week after that very disappointing jobs report. The president saying completely unsubstantiated that the numbers were rigged for political purposes.

[05:50:00]

You heard the president's top officials defending that move on Sunday. Kevin Hassett saying that the president wants his own people there so that when he sees the numbers that they're more transparent and reliable.

But we've also heard from a number of economists who say that these revisions that the president has been railing against are a normal process of how these jobs figures come together, and they're warning that eliminating and dismissing someone because the president doesn't like the numbers could lead down a very dangerous path.

Now, the president said that he planned to appoint a new head of that agency within three or four days. That person will be subject to what would be expected to be quite a contentious confirmation process in the Senate as the president's move is scrutinized and as lawmakers work to ensure that political interference doesn't seep into this critical statistical agency.

Kevin Liptak, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEE: And we now know the names of the four people killed in a bar shooting in Montana. Three women and a woman were shot and killed at The Owl Bar in Anaconda Friday. They are Daniel Edwin Baillie, Nancy Lauretta Kelley, David Allen Leach, and Tony Wayne Palm. All were local residents.

Montana's attorney general says there is an all-out manhunt for the suspect, Michael Paul Brown.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) AUSTIN KNUDSEN, MONTANA ATTORNEY GENERAL: The vehicle he ended up grabbing was loaded full of equipment. It was not his vehicle. It was a stolen vehicle. But there was camping equipment in it. We believe there is some clothing in it. So we -- at this point, we have every reason to believe the suspect is fully clothes, shoes on his feet, and able to get around. We are acting under the assumption that he is alive, well-armed, and extremely dangerous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Brown is a U.S. Army veteran. His family says he struggled with mental health issues. Officials are offering a $7,500 reward for information that leads to locating him.

And actress Loni Anderson has passed awa.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LONI ANDERSON, ACTRESS, "WKRP IN CINCINNATI": Would you like to sit down? We have all kinds of chairs. There's one over there, and there's another one over there. And then -- no, that's a clock.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Anderson is best known for her role on the CBS show "WKRP IN CINCINNATI" in the late '70s and early '80s. She played the smart and sassy receptionist Jennifer Marlow at a struggling radio station in Ohio. The role earned her nominations for two Emmy awards and three Golden Globes.

Anderson passed away Sunday after a prolonged illness, according to her publicist. And Tuesday would have been Anderson's 80th birthday.

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[05:57:17]

LEE: The Atlanta Braves claimed the checkered flag when they beat the Cincinnati Reds in the first Major League Baseball game played in the state of Tennessee. That's because it took place at Bristol Motor Speedway -- normally the home of squealing tires. But the MLB Speedway Classic replaced the roar of NASCAR engines with the Braves beating the Reds 4-2.

And Braves right fielder Eli White put his stamp on the venue's Thunder Valley nickname by hitting not just one but two home runs to hammer home the victory.

And finally this morning, many students across the south will be headed back to school today and one school superintendent is getting ready for the new school year by preparing his new setlist of pop music parodies.

CNN's Jeremy Roth sat down with the "Parody Principal."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JEREMY ROTH, CNN PRODUCER, WRITER, VOICE TALENT, HUMORIST (voiceover): It's back to school season and for most administrators that means prep work, planning, and oversight. But for one super creative southern Indiana school superintendent it also means turning school business into show business.

MIKE ALLEN, SUPERINTENDENT, "PARODY PRINCIPAL," EVANSVILLE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL: I tell people all the time, you know, that I can't believe that I get to do this as a part of my job as a superintendent. My name is Mike Allen, and I am the superintendent of Evansville Christian School, but I'm also known as the "Parody Principal."

ROTH (voiceover): For more than a decade in educational administration Allen has written and produced elaborate YouTube videos performing popular song parodies to keep his students, parents, and staff informed and entertained.

ALLEN: I try to choose ones that are fun, that are recognizable, and that work for telling the story I'm trying to tell.

Snow days, two-hour delays, Christmas breaks, spring breaks.

ROTH (voiceover): Not to mention COVID closures, parent-teacher meetings, and even winter safety.

It seems no school issue or musical genre for that matter is safe from Allen's punch parodies. And while his videos provide this natural showman a creative outlet, Allen says the biggest reward is the engagement with his students and staff.

ALLEN: It's not separate from my work, it for my work. It's a part of what I believe is part of my role, which is to encourage and inspire and affirm.

[06:00:00]

ROTH (voiceover): So for now, it's back to school for superintendent Allen and back to the old drawing board for the "Parody Principal."

I'm Jeremy Roth reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEE: And thank you so much for joining us here on EARLY START. I'm MJ Lee in Washington, D.C. And "CNN THIS MORNING" starts right now.