Youssef M. Karaki, is an industrialist and a businessman of Lebanese nationality, who was born in 1926, during the period of the British and French mandate of Lebanon - 1920/1943 -

He grew up in a family who owned and run a bakery in Beirut, in the Mouseitebee district, where at that time kneading and laminating the dough were all done by hands.

In the late forties he started his own small workshop in partnership with a colleague, Mohammed al-Halabi - who is a well known businessman in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia - doing mainly mechanical repairs and services. Though the partnership held for a couple of years.

At that period his industrial skills were showing up, and he decided to exploit his experience into something he thought was useful. Of course he first thought of his family where he knew the agony that his father encountered every workday to make the bread.

So it was natural for him to temper with any machine that had something to do with bread. From here his love relationship has started with bakery equipment.

He was able to produce his first dough sheeter, and most probably Lebanon's first, in mid fifties.

Of course at the time it was an achievement for himself and his family: Well, an achievement is not always a success story, because the Lebanese baker did not accept the machine at first.

So every time he sold a dough sheeter he had to go and stay with it at the client site for as long as the job needed, in the same time making whatever necessary changes to make the machine more functional.

Finally the sheeter was acceptable and won him in the sixties and the seventies, an unchallenged reputation for being the dough sheeter man of Lebanon.

He got married in 1958 and till then his only income was from either mechanical repairs or very small-scale manufacturing.

In 1960 he officially registered his workshop as Youssef Karaki establishment for industry and commerce.

He created a new factory in Beirut in the port district with a work force of more than seven people, and a small showroom in the Saifi district with a work force of two people.

Although hardly went to school he was a good reader and writer with beautiful handwriting. As we mentioned earlier, his knowledge to some foreign languages, facilitated his accession of better understanding of the industrial process through his first trip to Europe in 1964 which also led to buying some bakery machinery most needed on the Lebanese and Arab markets.

Though his love to manufacturing was too great to be subdued. In 1967 he was working on a design to manufacture an automatic line, for the production of the Lebanese bread, starting from the automatic dividing of dough through the final bread baking process.