Muslim Money Talk
Introducing the Muslim Money Talk Podcast, a place for all things Muslim and Money related.
Every week we'll be sitting down with Founders, leaders and industry experts from across multiple disciplines to discuss lessons learned, mistakes made and most importantly 'How they did it?'.
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Muslim Money Talk
Building The #1 Rated Burger Joint in London! | Sakib Ahmed - Muslim Money Talk Ep 18
In this episode of Muslim Money Talk, host Areeb Siddiqui speaks with Sakib Ahmed, co-founder of Simply Smash, London’s highest-rated burger joint. Sakib shares his journey from fintech to food service, discussing the challenges of launching a values-driven restaurant and overcoming adversity, including a review-bombing incident that led the community to rally in support of his business.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Intro
2:06 - Discussion on mutual connections in the London Muslim tech scene
3:00 - Saqib’s fintech background and degree apprenticeship at Goldman Sachs
8:05 - Founding Minideed, a charity-focused social media platform
15:34 - Developing a meaningful and positive social media experience
16:57 - Saqib’s transition from fintech to entrepreneurship with Minideed
17:56 - Decision to open a restaurant, leveraging family experience in the food industry
23:23 - Challenges of running a restaurant during the pandemic lockdown
24:32 - Tiramisu and “Help Our Heroes” campaigns to keep the restaurant afloat
29:05 - Transition to Simply Smash; inspiration for starting a new restaurant concept
32:13 - The “140-Day Challenge” to launch multiple brands and see which succeeds
38:34 - Simply Smash emerges as the winning concept; focus on data-driven burgers
41:39 - Emphasis on customer feedback and delivery experience as success metrics
45:07 - Saqib discusses the review-bomb incident over pro-Palestinian stance
47:51 - Community support through 200+ positive reviews
49:14 - Saqib’s commitment to integrating values into his business model
51:58 - Muslim values in business as a differentiator
52:18 - Financial and tech industry parallels with data-driven business models
54:19 - Saqib introduces Simply Smash’s Wagyu Beef Brisket burger
58:01 - Future plans: Scaling Simply Smash with potential new locations
1:04:01 - Discussion on balancing growth strategies: franchising vs. bootstrapping
1:06:50 - Saqib’s lessons from working with his brother to balance quality and operations
1:07:05 - Saqib’s high points: Impactful community work and building a values-based legacy
The thing about the food industry if something works, you'll see that, you know.
Speaker 2:You know that everyone else is going to.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So if we had that in mind. Like, I love using my creativity to build businesses, but if there's a way that we can put our values onto this, stamp our values onto this. The hope is that if you're going to take inspiration from the way we run things, also take the fact that we're doing it with our values.
Speaker 3:In today's episode, we're doing something a little bit different. I'm really pleased to be joined by Saqib Ahmed, the co-founder of Simply Smash, the number one rated burger joint in all of London. He shared with us his journey, how he started in fintech and how he leveraged that experience to create what he calls data-driven burgers, and how he specifically focused on customer reviews to become the number one burger. He also shared a relatively harrowing experience where he ended up getting review bombed for supporting a certain cause and standing on his beliefs, and how the community rallied together to support and uplift him. A really amazing story for you today, so please tune into the whole thing.
Speaker 3:As always, I'm your host, arif Siddiqui, and this is Muslim Money Talk. Before we begin, we actually noticed only about 10% of you are subscribed to the podcast, so if you like what you're listening to and you want to hear more from us and see more things Muslim and money related, then please consider subscribing and, of course, leaving this episode a like and share it with your friends. Leave us a comment or a review, because it really, really does help us out and help more people to find us. Thank you Now back to the show. As-salamu alaykum Wa Thank you now back to the show Saqib. Assalamualaikum, waalaikumussalam, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thanks for having me. Yeah, how are you doing?
Speaker 3:I'm good.
Speaker 1:Alhamdulillah. Yeah, how about you? How are you doing? Yeah, I'm okay. No one ever asked me that.
Speaker 3:15, 16 episodes in, and no one's ever asked me that question back. So, yeah, alhamdulillah. This is, I think, our first time meeting in person.
Speaker 1:I think so, but we have a lot of mutual friends.
Speaker 3:We have a lot of mutual friends. Many of them have appeared on the podcast so far, but I think I first became aware of you firstly through that WhatsApp group that we're a part of the London Muslim Tech Praise.
Speaker 2:Group.
Speaker 3:And I knew about Simply Smashed for a long time, but then I didn't make the connection between you and Simply Smashed until what happened recently with you know the review, bombing and what has happened since. So, yeah, it's a pleasure to have you on. Thank you for making the time.
Speaker 1:The pleasure's all mine.
Speaker 3:So I wanted to. We've got a lot in store in this podcast. There's a real rollercoaster of a story that you can share from your journey in fintech. You know, starting off there and then moving almost on paper. It seems like how did this happen? But, moving to set up your own burger joint to review bombing by certain entities and then rising to become the number one reviews burger joint in all of london.
Speaker 1:Uh, only last month, right, mashallah, we've been the number one rate burger jam for around like four months now four months ago, yeah, so we've been there for a while, but recently we just solidified that position more so we've been for like 4.8, 4.9, which is the highest you possibly can go incredible incredible.
Speaker 3:I do have a bone to pick with you, though. Why aren't you guys on delivery at uber eats?
Speaker 1:we are on uber eats. Yeah, uh, we're exclusive with uber eats right now. So that's the reason why with them, because we've got an exclusive contract with them I see, I see so yeah, with that one of the highest rated merchants on uber eats.
Speaker 3:So okay, amazing you just. But they do deliver as well. It's not just pickup, yeah, yeah, okay, no way, I'm pretty sure this is in the delivery, this as well, which is but yeah it's uh covers most of east and central london fine, fine, fine, fine.
Speaker 3:Okay, the reason I asked that will become clear shortly but, let's let's start with your background yes because, obviously, if you look at, if I look at you on paper queen mary's, you did digital and tech solutions. Yep, is that right? That's right. And then you went on to join a startup yeah, no.
Speaker 1:So, uh, I did a degree apprenticeship so I worked at goldman sachs, uh, as a degree apprenticeship. So I worked at Goldman Sachs as a degree apprentice and studied at Queen Mary at the same time.
Speaker 2:No way.
Speaker 3:Okay, so how does that work?
Speaker 1:So we were the first cohort of the program at the time. So I used to work three days at Goldman Sachs as a software engineer and studying two days at Queen Mary at the same time, that's incredible.
Speaker 3:How did you apply for something like that?
Speaker 1:days at Queen Mary at the same time. That's incredible.
Speaker 3:How did you apply for something like that? How did I apply so uh, honestly, uh.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was in college I so my brother's taken a gap year and like he worked for a year in in uh, I think it was IBM, but he's three years older than me and when I was in college I felt like I wanted to do something similar before going into university. So and I remember applying to a bunch of these and just getting rejected and that, like people go through that grad rejection experience and they talk about how tough that is, that first time you get that rejection. For me I was getting that in college, trying to apply for things and trying to do my A-levels at the same time. So was this through UCAS or was it separate? It wasn't for UCAS. So I was going through these rejections.
Speaker 1:You're applying for jobs. You apply just like it's. It's a job really. So going for an assessment center, going for interviews, all of those things. I remember getting a bunch of these rejections and then my brother just sent me this application you should apply for this and it was just an email and it was. They were the first cohort to tech and back then, like tech wasn't uh sexy, right, it was. When I heard the tech, I was like, oh, they're gonna be uh, fixing back of computers or it. Thus I I didn't know how how much there was to explore there, so but.
Speaker 3:But it was with Goldman specifically they made that clear had you heard of them before.
Speaker 1:So I did hear of Goldman before. Yes, Especially the college I went to. We went to different inside days, different banks. I knew the value of the name and something prestigious, but I just didn't see myself going into tech. Everyone was going for finance at the time. I want to be that guy yeah yeah, my brother said just apply.
Speaker 1:And then I started. Then I applied, started going through the application process and like some of the questions they were asking me, like I remember the take-home exercise. It's like it really got you to like problem solve really well and then I started thinking maybe there is a rule here. I know that if I go in any previous rejections, if I didn't get those rejections I wouldn't be in tech today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course, so it was always meant to be yeah, but so what was the setup? I'm just trying to understand? You apply, you got this job with goldman's and they said come and join us, but do it alongside your university degree.
Speaker 1:So goldman funds your degree no way, yes, so you, um, you don't, you don't go for ucas. They, uh, goldman has, and other employees have a set amount of spaces for their degree apprenticeship program and there's certain universities linked up with this program.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in this case queen mary in this case queen mary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, once you get accepted into by goldman, you've got a space at queen mary incredible.
Speaker 3:So the idea is that you would do your, was it four, four years? You did.
Speaker 1:It was four years, but it ended up being five. Okay, okay, so you do your time at Queen Mary's?
Speaker 3:Yes, and then you would go and start full-time at Goldman's. I guess that's the idea, that's that, but you did something in between. I think mini-deal, oh no, mini-deal was during. That was during.
Speaker 1:Okay. So how did that come about? When I was working at Goldman, it was actually in the prayer room In the Goldman Sachs prayer room and there was a. I made a friend there that we used to go for jamat regularly For a solo there and I think one time I remember asking him How's it going? Just small talk, and he misheard that to like How's his app going? And then he just started talking about this app. I didn't know what app he was talking about. He's just like, yeah, it's going well, we're getting some of these blockers and stuff like that, but that's what we're trying to build. And I was like, hold on, I just asked him how's it going.
Speaker 1:So then he first iteration that he's built himself of what minidid is. So just to give context on what minidid is is a media, social media app that meets uh think of twitter, meets gofundme, right? So the idea is that every post you make, every, every tweet that you'd make, actually raises money for charity. So the way you interact with tweets, tweets is not by retweeting, but you can donate micro donation pennies to different charities.
Speaker 3:Oh, I think sadik told me about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think he was signed up to it yeah yeah, gosh very early on, I think, like in 2020 yeah, so that's when I was working on it at the time.
Speaker 3:So sorry for people who don't know. I mean sadik doris. He knows who he is, if he's listening. He's the founder of muslim census and now normal money he'll be on the podcast soon. But okay, no way. So you guys were behind that. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I like the idea, I really like the concept and I really think something was there. So I asked yeah, I'd love to get involved and help out. No way, if there's any way. And that literally started my journey into growing and building Minideed and entrepreneurship in general.
Speaker 1:Yeah, entrepreneurship in general. So that was your first taste of it? Yeah, definitely, and to this day, I still think it's one of the most enjoyable ones I've had, really. No, it's not that everything since has been difficult, but it's just like. I think there's something really special about building products that makes an impact. You could see the direct impact of what you're building immediately, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Whereas at Goldman's. What were you doing at Goldman's? So?
Speaker 1:at Goldman's. Yeah, I did my first two years. I was a voice engineer, so essentially it wasn't more software engineering there, it was more infrastructure management of things like mics, hoots, trader mics, those big migrations happening, how you handle that. So it's more like project management kind of work.
Speaker 3:Big project management software as a service type thing the dealers we're using, I guess yeah exactly Exactly that, and I was working on a project to build a software solution.
Speaker 1:So like software turrets as well.
Speaker 3:So basically, goldman's and your degree gave you almost the called a soft phone solution, so like a software. Okay, turrets as well. So basically, goldman's and your degree gave you almost the, the, you know the, the toolbox that you needed, and and the training, and then you finally got to apply it in a very interesting way through mini deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah through mini did?
Speaker 1:yeah, definitely, even from my learning experience, I feel like I was so much more interested in the stuff I was doing at gold and stuff I was doing at Menedit and what I learned don't get me wrong gave me a good foundation. It was very theoretical, so I was just one of the cool things, especially because it was the first cohort of people at the apprenticeship some people there's criticism of like an unstructured program, there's not much direction, but it's also an opportunity to learn what you want. Right, you can try and take initiative. Yeah, and that's what I really did like I started naturally gravitating more towards product when you say product for people who don't know, what does that mean?
Speaker 1:from a government perspective, I was just getting more interested about okay, who's buying these turrets, how does those deals work, those kind of things, also looking more towards the client. But in terms of what? Mini? Mini deed was more core product. Right, it was the main problem I was trying to figure out with mini deed is how do we get people? And we had no users, nothing at the time, and it was this problem that we were trying to solve for a couple months really. And I remember, uh, that's when I went through my first accelerator program with who called fast forward fast forward.
Speaker 1:Yes, okay, yes so they um, they were like a seven week accelerator program. I was actually um at the time. I was using my university days to go oh yeah, accelerator program okay instead of, I'll just do uni in like at home.
Speaker 3:It's fine are you okay saying that on camera? Okay, I don't work at goldman I got my degree, so my next question was was your employer okay with you doing all this, or did they know they?
Speaker 1:did not know yeah, they did not know.
Speaker 1:They didn't know anything about me needed, it was just more doing my degree, passion yeah it was more a side passion project and, um, yeah, it was something that you really used to excite me and I was. I remember at the time we had like we had zero users and that's what we're trying to figure out. For a couple months we were getting nowhere and then we went through this accelerate program. I just remember this particular experiment we did that got us like our first couple users and made us realize that's why we've not been getting any users, because I've been pushing it out, I've been sharing it here and there and you're not. You're just not getting any people using it. And we just didn't understand for a long time what was going on. And, uh, I I remember putting out a screen recording of of just one function of the app, which was, uh, the function of the app I'm talking about was it just opening a deep link post to the app, doing a micro donation.
Speaker 1:It was a way to like, within two taps you've donated a penny. So it was just highlighting that. We just realized people were not understanding the product Because we just explained one feature of the app and people started coming onto the app because of, ooh, let me see this easy way to donate, for example, even though that was not our product. Right, we weren't building something just to make donations easier. Right, we were trying to build social media.
Speaker 3:But that resonated with the customer base enough. Yes, it drew them in. It drew them in it drew them in.
Speaker 1:It was breaking down our app to just one feature and it was enough to bring people in. That's so interesting yeah.
Speaker 3:We had a very similar experience recently where, with Kestrel, we do a lot of stuff so there's budgeting, auto-saving and Sharia screening but recently we built an interesting feature which had been in our backlog for a long time and I just didn't think it was that interesting, but we had some time we built it. It was an interest purifier.
Speaker 3:We noticed a lot of customers were gaining interest on bank accounts without realizing it or sometimes realizing it, and they were just giving it away randomly. Oh, I'll give £10 here in Satka, I'll do this. And we realize that through open banking people connect their banks. We can actually see every single interest payment that comes in and we can just say to you listen, so I could. You've. You've gained 10 pounds of interest on your starling account this month. Do you want to donate it to national zagat foundation? Very intentionally and it's not sadhkar, like a lot of people don't realize that interest that comes in cannot be given as charity. It needs to be purified, given away and you won't be getting reward for it, but it will purify the rest of your life. Um, and I just put up like a screen recording on linkedin and a bunch of people were like this is really useful why didn't you guys do this from the start?
Speaker 1:and alhamdulillah, we got like quite a few people using that um like over over, just a couple of days, yeah, so I was like, wow, okay, we should be doing stuff like this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that started like the whole new train of you know new products over there. But anyway, it's not about me, it's about you.
Speaker 1:It's exactly that. That's exactly what happened to us and I think like sometimes as founders we get very too engrossed in how product looks from the big picture and all the things, and that's when my mindset thinking kind of shift right. Of like try and always frame whatever you're building in the mind of the customer right.
Speaker 1:And then we started growing our initial community from there. Alhamdulillah, it grew. We ran a couple campaigns, like I remember, like our peak was in ramadan. We're getting, uh, really good traction for ramadan, like mini did, became this app. Where all these social, where people would go?
Speaker 3:I want to stay off other social media I still want to use social media because it's like a feel-good social media where every like you're not just mindlessly watching and liking stuff every tap is actually donating. And it also means like you're not just mindlessly watching and liking stuff every tap is actually donating.
Speaker 1:And it also means that you're quite meaningful, yeah, with the stuff you're interacting with as well, and what's really cool, that it's kind of it built like its own identity within the app of how what people perceived mini d to be how people were using when they did so to give you an example is people. It became this wholesome social media. If I'm going to post and raise money for charity, I want to post positive things. I want to post things that I don't want to doom. Scroll me indeed right, and that's how users.
Speaker 1:We didn't say anything. We didn't say this is how you post, this is what you do. We didn't say anything at all, but it was very interesting to see. This is what we built, See how you take it, and this is the identity they made of the app themselves. And, yeah, I remember thinking like, wow, we built such a cool space and like we've had, like it was such a supportive community as well. We started building this community where, like, people were sharing their struggles and you see so many support, You're like you're getting the non-toxicity from other social media and they were coming to Minidid. Wow, and yeah, it was a very, very cool space we built.
Speaker 3:So where is Minidid now?
Speaker 1:So, minidid now, I left the team after like a year and a half, a year and a bit.
Speaker 3:Okay, a year, so you left in 2021? After like a year?
Speaker 1:and a half a year and a bit, okay, a year. So you left in 2021? Yeah, just around there. So I grew the initial community back then. We got it from the, went through the XRA program. We, I think we got around 10,000 users at its peak Okay. So it was good, but I just had other priorities back then. So I had to move on and I think they still have a community. I don't think they've built out more from there, but it's still being maintained.
Speaker 3:It still has an active community. You learned so much from that experience and obviously you got bitten by the entrepreneurship bug. So I want to know, because I'm seeing two stories here. I'm seeing tech stories here I'm seeing tech financial services, goldman's entrepreneur maybe going down a fintech route yeah and then suddenly you go and open up a burger restaurant in east london. What happened? What's the connection?
Speaker 1:so the connection is mudasa actually gave me a book and that's a charter yeah, so he gave me literally the the episode right before this one.
Speaker 3:That's perfect.
Speaker 1:He gave me a book on the unfair advantages Ash Ali and Hash Kuba. It's a great book, by the way. Unfair advantages by who? Hash Ali and Ash Kuba.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And one of the things it talks about is when you're building is looking at what advantages you have to yourself, where are you ahead in other people? And you just double down on those, you compound on those wins and go further in there. And the reason why restaurant obviously we chose restaurant is very simple. My dad has a restaurant and that was the idea. Like to understand where Simply Smash started. It starts with my dad. My dad has been in the food industry for about 20 years now, alhamdulillah, so he is. I was born in france, so he actually had a. Uh, his first restaurant was in france, so I was born in a seaside town called yep, so think of it like a french equivalent of brighton, kind of like it's very seaside. At the time we were probably the only bengalis in the area. My dad opened his first indian restaurant there and, yeah, we became known as the family with the indian restaurant. People loved our food so it was good how long were you there?
Speaker 1:for I was there, and for the first eight years of my life.
Speaker 3:So I moved when I was eight oh, okay, uh, oh, no way, okay, well, okay, I'm not gonna push my luck anymore. Okay, so you were there for eight years. Your father ran a restaurant, yes, and then moved to London.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my father ran a restaurant for a couple of years. Then he also did a couple of years as a market trader Okay, selling things in the back of the market. So even my brother's sense of entrepreneurship even from then I was a bit too young for that time, but my brother used to go with my dad to sell these like it was like toys, posters, all the things and he's doing. I remember the big van used to take all the things to market trader and which markers it was in france.
Speaker 1:This was in france, yeah, yeah, so that's that's the things he did there before we moved to uh, to the uk, and then, with my dad, worked on another restaurant here, uh, which, and before opening up his own restaurant for the first time with it, with a partner, and that was called zaytun, so it was like a somali restaurant, zaytun yeah, okay yeah, so it was like back then somali food was as trendy as it is now yeah and it was. There's one right next to your restaurant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's it called?
Speaker 1:It's called Darbar. I think Damal Damal, damal Damal, I don't know how I forgot that.
Speaker 3:Okay, sorry, if they're watching, yeah.
Speaker 1:So he opened that up, ran it for a couple of years and he was actually my brother. That was when he was quite young, actually when he was 18. So I was still quite young back then, but when he was 18, I think he took that restaurant and him and my dad opened the first halal Italian restaurant in the area.
Speaker 2:In the same place. Yeah, it was called.
Speaker 1:Anima d'Italia back then and that's what it became the first halal Italian restaurant. So my brother ran that for a year. Then he went to uni and my dad continued running it for a couple of years and Alhamdulillah, yeah, it did. Good it did. It had a very strong start, Like when especially when my brother was there we had a lot of traction. There wasn't much halal food in the area.
Speaker 2:I mean halal Italian, halal Italian yeah it's still pretty rare.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very rare, exactly, except for the whole pizza express thing yeah, yeah, so like getting like a good pasta, especially back then, yeah food restaurants was always in the back of your mind as okay, this is a staple of my family it was so more recent, so like how I roped in was more. So fast forward a bit more to lockdown period, and I was just nearing the end of my degree and finishing off my apprenticeship at Goldman Sachs.
Speaker 3:And mini deed, you were still there.
Speaker 1:Mini deed. By then I started easing off. Okay, I just needed to focus on. Finishing uni Finishing uni finishing work I still remember this very clearly where my parents decided to go back to Bangladesh. They wanted my brother and me to help oversee things at the restaurant. And I remember right when they were on the flight that's when lockdown got announced Whilst they were in the air. Whilst they were in the air, like UK lockdown was just announced oh my God, and like flights were about to be stopped.
Speaker 1:It led to like the most intense, one of the most intense three months period of my life where we suddenly got this restaurant that we have to pivot now just to um, try and survive and at the same time, finishing off my degree, uh, finishing off government, and also, just um, that was the first time kind of living without my parents, oh my god literally thrust into adulthood.
Speaker 3:You inherit a restaurant in the middle of lockdown where you can't have anyone come to the restaurant yeah, you have to finish your degree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, deal with your employer.
Speaker 1:Goldman's yeah and you and your brother are just living on your alone for the first time yeah, yeah, it was me, my brother and his wife, and we were just in that house with like no adults.
Speaker 3:Was the restaurant below the house?
Speaker 1:no, no, no so, um no, it's like 15 minutes away. Okay, it's not super far, but uh, yeah it. It led to a very uh intense period and we just we went through so many things during that period.
Speaker 3:It was crazy what was the hardest time about that period?
Speaker 1:so we had to figure out how to survive.
Speaker 1:That was the main thing, because when you say survive the rest to keep the restaurant yeah keep the restaurant flow because we realized that it was going through times of difficulty at the time and so we weren't starting from zero. We had to, we had to stay afloat and go super lean survival mode. So we at the time me and my brother decided to run two campaigns okay, to uh, to help keep it afloat and also do something for community and it's why I'm really big for community at simply smash. Now I'll explain why it was uh. So the first campaign we ran this was to more, just unlock a new revenue stream and just uh, get a bit more money flowing into the restaurant, which was, uh, we focused one of our star products, which is the tiramisu. It's still the tiramisu that we sell at Simply Smash, really.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:And that's actually my mom's recipe.
Speaker 3:No way.
Speaker 1:So it's my mom's recipe, the one that we still have from back then to now, and we focused on that and we decided to sell it in trays rather than slices and do delivery around London Okay, and do delivery around london okay. And we call this campaign the trumancy response unit. I'm quite proud of that name. We did these uh trays and we put like pandemic puns on it okay perfect pandemic, pick me up.
Speaker 1:Or social distancing not necessary while consuming it, those kind of things and just adding a bit more humor to people's yeah, especially when you're what was going on, what was going on at the time and I'm you. That was quite successful, Like a lot of people were started being big fans of our term issue and we managed to deliver also outside. Like the East London, we started delivering around London with them. No way, With just you and your brother being delivery.
Speaker 1:My brother did a lot and then we just got someone to help us out to start doing some deliveries. And the other campaign we did was, even though we were in difficult times, we wanted to do I was thinking about how do we stay afloat, but also like if there's anything we can do for the community we should be able to try. We should try at the very least, and that's what the back of that, mudassa, was actually involved with this campaign with me, me and the support others in this campaign which is called help our heroes. So the help our heroes campaign we decided to do is the deliver pizzas to nhs workers, and the way we did this was for every pizza that's donated by the public, simply, I mean, anima d'italia will match it and would donate it to different hospitals around london. No way that campaign did really well, like it went viral around corporate networks, okay, and like ey deloitte the rest of the big how were you distributing this?
Speaker 1:so yeah. So how would us all us like? On your own personal social yeah personal, socials, or distributing by the pizzas, or do you mean the camp? Oh no, sorry, I mean the campaign oh, the campaign.
Speaker 3:how did you get the word out?
Speaker 1:So, like the way it went viral on corporate networks was via email.
Speaker 3:It was just one of those campaigns when Mudassir comes in, of course, the head of the UI Muslim community. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah, like we had Sadiq Ibrahim and my brother, we all pushed it out.
Speaker 3:Sadiq was at deloitte at the time at deloitte, okay, so we had.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, we started everything from dean developers. Yes, okay, there you go. Yeah, four people, one, okay, yeah. So so started there like um seeding this campaign and it got spread a lot via email and, uh, it led to a lot of donations that we've managed to use to donate a lot of pizzas around London. So we were like, I think, uh, we, I think our peak were delivered. We delivered like a total of 10,000. Whoa, yeah, and how? What period? In two and a half months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what? Yeah? 10.
Speaker 3:And a half thousand pizzas.
Speaker 1:Sorry my bad, not 10,000, 10,000,. No, it was 10,000 to 15,000 slices, so that's the amount.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, sorry, but still, that's a lot of individual deliveries. Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:No, I think it wasn't one delivery or something. Oh, okay, because it's a corporate, okay, fine. No, we just give, like we do, batch deliveries ofipped in.
Speaker 3:We all tried to drop off to different hospitals but there's still, say, 10 slices of pizza, a thousand pizzas, yeah, no, it was a very short time frame.
Speaker 1:Yeah, incredible yeah, it was. It was a way to like a cover costs that was more like to still pay our staff, to have enough money to actually pay our staff and also do something for the community so you'd inherited the stuff from your parents.
Speaker 3:What? Yes what did the staff look like? How many did you have?
Speaker 1:so we, we had around uh, three staff and chefs, yeah, chefs, yeah. So, um, we put people on the ones that could be on a government furlough. Put them if some people wanted one or two wanted to work. So that's that's the setup we had. We, we focused, we went very, we went very back to basics and went back to a delivery model focusing, focusing on delivery experience. So, even like, uh, anima, anima d'italia at the time it looked like it was on, like, just like it, can we? We pushed all the tables away and then you didn't need them, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, you didn't need them, so it was just like we turned it into a counter and then people used to come. We focused a lot on our deliveries.
Speaker 2:This is reminding me of the bear right, this is like a Desi budget bear ride which is a show about Disney+.
Speaker 3:Wow, okay, okay, incredible. So this is still where. Does Simply Smash come into this, so yes.
Speaker 1:Simply Smash is where it came into this. So we ran those two campaigns, alhamdulillah stayed afloat, and at the end of that we were thinking okay, what should we do now? And we had two options no-transcript. Should we look into an opportunity to start something new?
Speaker 3:and what. What were things like at that point? Had you broken even and you thought okay, no yeah as in.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, we were still in the red and we're still. We're still trying to figure things out.
Speaker 3:So it was still how were you funding this? Just through your own money.
Speaker 1:We had missed some of our lease payments okay so it was those kind of yeah yeah, so it was.
Speaker 1:we didn't owe directly much, so it was, it was just figuring those things out. And yeah, so we started. We started entertaining talks to sell and we had a couple of talks and but I think on the back of that we it was actually one of the one of the negotiations negotiations we had, which was they had a very, very harsh and very rude negotiation tactic which kind of insult, insult my dad, or like my dad, felt a bit personal on that.
Speaker 3:Who was this you were talking to, you're going to say that another restaurant or it was another brand.
Speaker 1:It was a very mainstream brand an italian brand. Uh, it was an italian brand. No, it's a. It's a very popular brand, very popular brand okay, fine yeah, I'll just keep it at that okay but uh, yeah, yeah, I think that that, uh, that really got to us and we thought you know what we? It spurred us on to maybe look into doing something else, like give it one, yeah, and then like this time, we see what we can do together, so like our skills are really complimentary, so like we can build something.
Speaker 3:You, your brother, your father. Yes, what skills did you each bring to the table?
Speaker 1:My brother is really good. He's a logistical wizard. He's very good at scale, like building the processes, making sure that we can scale things efficiently.
Speaker 3:Uh, so a chief operating officer for it, basically I.
Speaker 1:I think he's more the ceo yeah I, I, because I I like to get into like product and growth and like, okay, in terms of the management, he's very good at that. Fine, so he he's more the ce I fit, more the CEO role and and your father my father is just the boss okay, fine yeah, so he, because he's he's, he's got a lot worth of experience. Yeah, so one thing my dad, he's always show up yeah he will always show up, even like because he's worked in this business all the time he's always.
Speaker 1:It's always at the back of his mind. He will always show up if we need anything. There's something needed, he'll be there. So yeah, we were thinking at the time and, alhamdulillah, I managed to finish my degree and finished Goldman.
Speaker 3:So I heard Goldman said look, you finished your degree, come join us full time. And you were like I wanted to take a break, come join us full-time.
Speaker 1:And you were like I wanted to take a break, okay, so I didn't want to go back to goldman. So, um, one of the things I wanted to do is, uh, so I spent like eight months abroad and studying, but before we do that, I had like around three months after I finished goldman. So we had like a three months window, and in that three months window we started. We decided let's build something else. So that spurred on what I called the 140 day challenge.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:And the idea was very simple. We built a new brand from scratch, in public and internally. We actually tried to launch three brands at once and the idea was one of these is going to win, so we need to know which one wins and then we can double down on that. Why 140 days? Because that's how long I had until I leave.
Speaker 3:That's literally it 140 days.
Speaker 1:We're going to make three brands.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And one of them inshallah is going to win. Inshallah.
Speaker 1:So one of them was obviously simply smashed, yes, so the others was a, a vegan version of simply smashed. That we call vegan burger bros. Oh, okay, we did launch that. Okay, that was quite cool. Uh, so, like it was a burger brand with like vegan products instead of that vegan was very big at the time.
Speaker 1:There was, uh, that, all these places popping up around east london central, um, I can't remember the names now, but yes, yeah, okay, fine yeah, it was, and it did get some good traction, okay, and we had a couple customers, like it was growing at the time, and the third one was called greg, which was like a french doner brand. That's what that's. That's the one I wanted to bring to my french doner brand.
Speaker 1:Okay, because I was born in france so one thing is just, and there's done um the french street food, like donna's really big there and the quality of the meat they use there is much more higher quality and this, uh, it just tastes better for me so it's one of the things I really wanted to bring to the uk okay, so you'd be going head to head with german donna yeah, like, yeah, like.
Speaker 1:That's the kind of concept that we wanted to build and unfortunately we couldn't get a grip to market because of um, supply chain issues with the meat, we couldn't get it in. It's a shame, because that's the one we pushed the most as well. That's the one I was super excited about. So then it became the which burger brand does the best right and um, yeah, um, it became clear that simply smash was growing to be the clear winner thank you you for listening to Muslim Money Talk.
Speaker 3:If you like what you've heard so far, you might be interested in checking out what we do at Kestrel, the Muslim money app. Kestrel is a service that helps Muslims who want to grow their wealth without having to compromise, whether it's on their belief or user experience or price. I founded Kestrel because of how fed up I was at how poor Islamic financial services were in this country. Often people didn't use them because of how bad the user experience or customer service and indeed, how high in price they were. So Kestrel was the answer to that. If you download the Kestrel app today, it can help you by creating a budgeting plan. Plug in whatever bank account you have and it will create an auto budget just for you. You can then tell us what goals you're saving for, and we'll save towards them automatically into pots and then, crucially, link you towards Sharia compliant investment and savings products as well. So download Kestrel today and try it out for yourself. Now back to the podcast. And you were doing all of this from your restaurant.
Speaker 1:We were doing all of this from the Italian restaurant Same kitchen, same kitchen. We operate from today.
Speaker 3:So did you just like close up the menu, say we're not doing Italian food anymore, so no that was the fourth Actually, so remember there was four brands operating.
Speaker 1:So that was still there.
Speaker 3:The original Italian brand.
Speaker 1:So it was like we can open these free from scratch, let's see which one wins, or even or, if anybody italian does great, we'll take that, we'll like, we'll revitalize that brand. So it was. It was trying to figure out which one's the clear winner. Right, yeah, and she, my dad, didn't want to do burgers really yeah, he's like french, you know, come from france.
Speaker 3:Fine dining, smash burgers.
Speaker 1:That's exactly why he doesn't want to do burgers. Yeah, he, he, he. Like he was really proud of the italian food setting and for him he didn't want to go into this in the burger burger market. But I think I have to edge it and push him a bit closer to get what man?
Speaker 3:because, look, I work with my father and my brother as well. My dad is like the cfo, the gray hairs behind it. He controls all the money. My dad, my brother, is like head of legal as a lawyer. The only thing that can move my father in any kind of meeting is the money to show him to show him the money.
Speaker 1:You know, exactly right I assume it's a similar story this is asian dad universal yeah, literally if you could show them that something works. Showing showing that it's working, then it sways them right and uh and like, like it started showing that simply smash with the clear winner.
Speaker 1:Simply smash was my brother's idea like no way yeah, he literally bought a hundred pound grill, brought that in, we didn't buy any other equipment and we just started selling burgers from there. Wow, yeah, because even then, like we were trying to operate super lean, right Also because I'm a little bit worried that we ordered this an hour ago.
Speaker 3:But I know the surprise has probably spoiled a little bit because you came in. I actually made a quick trip and at this point in the video Armour if you want want to show I did film a bit of my trip over there.
Speaker 1:Did you go to UN today? Yeah?
Speaker 3:just before I got here. It was my first stop off, so here is a Simply Smashed I know I wanted to do a reveal thing it's still warm.
Speaker 2:It's still warm. It's still warm.
Speaker 3:It should be okay but yeah, this is the simply smash the wagyu beef brisket ah the new burger that we just launched, yeah, yeah exactly so I wanted. I thought, you know, maybe we could try it out here on camera.
Speaker 2:Maybe you can talk to it as well, like a mukbang episode. Yeah, yeah, exactly like a mukbang episode, maybe um, but yeah.
Speaker 3:So this is I don't know if I can the winning thing out of the four brands. That you did. I'm showing this to the camera now. But yeah, there you go. So talk to me about this. Why did this win? Why was this most popular?
Speaker 1:Why was this the most popular? So I think it like it. It just goes back to like the unfair advantage right. For me it was more about the vegan burger was working. It was. It was getting some traction yeah and, but it simply like there was. There's a good demand burgers, there's always a good demand for burgers at the time, so we had simply the numbers were showing so much stronger for for simply smashed and how were you marketing this?
Speaker 3:was it through uber eats?
Speaker 1:that's. That's. That's why I was talking about the unfair advantages, right? It's because I, uh like, I had a, I was still using my twitter account and I was still building this in public. Right, I have a strong, predominantly like muslim audience at the time. That's what I was thinking about so in terms of where should I double down? It just became easier.
Speaker 1:My marketing efforts would be easier if we went something like this, even, but all the positive signs were already showing for simple, smashed absolutely, but that's the kind of in terms of how we're looking, just double down on where you end of the 140 days you had managed through your, through your distribution.
Speaker 3:You were pushing the vegan brand and this brand right. Yeah, and you found, clearly, at the end of 140 days, simply, smashed what was the proportion for simply smashed that made you think this is the winner.
Speaker 1:It was like an 80 20 thing it was probably like a 70 30 kind of thing okay, well, this is very clearly yeah, very clearly it was a so talk me through the concept.
Speaker 3:I don't know should we unwrap it show show the people what this looks like yeah, um so I I thought to order this one, because I saw your video recently about how you were doing this special campaign. Yeah, so there it is. This is the, the wagyu beef brisket, and you were saying that you were donating a. Was it a portion of the revenue or?
Speaker 1:no, uh, all of it, no, all the profits of it was donated to. Uh, he must have made just finished the campaign.
Speaker 2:People in gaza, yeah yeah it's incredible um as well, by the way so talk me through the burgers what?
Speaker 3:what is a smash burger?
Speaker 1:uh, what a smashed burger is a burger where you smash the patty. It says what's in the name, right. So it's a concept that became popularized in America where you smash the patty, you get balls of patties and you smash it on the grill, it creates a crust at the bottom, and that's where the flavor comes from, as well.
Speaker 1:And you season it directly on the grill, right? It's not patties that you create and season beforehand and try and grill it, and that's what we wanted to do. Real Well, every single of our recipes, we start them at home. You make it for yourself first, so yeah, so that's one of the things about Simply Smashed is that, like every single recipe you see there was made by different family members.
Speaker 3:I have to say I'm usually not a fan of burgers, you know.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:I'm usually not, but this is a really, really good burger. I'm not just saying that for the camera. Seriously, it's actually really good. So the idea is you're making something that you yourself would like Each of the family members had some part to play in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like we tested all our recipes, we test them at home first, then we bring them to the restaurant and then we test a couple of times after that. So it was generally we started making burgers that we would make a product.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Testing and iterating. We started making burgers that we would make a product. Yeah, um testing and integrating, and one of the things we did is um almost made what we'd call like data-driven burgers data-driven burgers.
Speaker 3:That's the point.
Speaker 1:There's a term for it but the idea was that, especially when we opened as a dark kitchen, we had so many different options like um. We went for that like kind of five guy style model where, like you customize, you can make your own burgers. We used that to capture data and we used that to understand what combinations work best.
Speaker 3:Oh, I see. So you would basically see all of these different permutations of a burger yes, have it with pickles, with this sauce, with this kind of meat, this kind of that. And then you would see okay, this is the winning one that people are clearly choosing what kind? Of me this kind of that, and then you would see okay, this is the winning one, that people are clearly choosing.
Speaker 1:What kind of audience size. Were you getting to be able to test all this? So we're predominantly delivery by the time so doing corporate through corporate emailing or no, it was, but we finished all our campaigns, we wrapped them up, we, we, we started back from scratch. So if we said, if we're going to build a brand, we have to go back to square one, yeah and for us, because we did, we did, we focused on the delivery experience.
Speaker 1:So well, that's what we should start. So what we actually did is focused on simply smashed as a delivery kitchen and to keep us afloat, we rented out the flat. We rented out the front bit to a flower shop. Oh really, yeah, so we actually had a very weird aesthetic where people would have to go through a flower shop to pick up some burgers. And there's still videos. I'll show you some videos.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not like that anymore.
Speaker 1:I was going to say I'll show you videos of me just handing burgers to people when they go through a flower shop. But yeah, that's the model we went for and we started working very hard on building that audience and we started growing it out from like the first 10 first hundred customers and started growing and we started really working really well to make that delivery business good.
Speaker 1:We really focused on the quality and the ratings as well and you'll see that like it simply smashes like rated top eats on uber eats yeah which is a certification that uber eats gives you when you're uh, essentially one of the highest free merchants on the platform was that your metric for success?
Speaker 3:was it okay? We want people to use us and really to show repeat usage and engagement. We want them to then go and review us yeah, within wherever they order us from definitely, and one of our metrics of success and especially us we were big on reviews.
Speaker 1:We're big on that's the one of the best social proofs you can get for us, because the what we saw, especially in this market, is that there is a lot of spent on influence, influencer, spend that can create good or, um, that can create a boost for your business and sales, but it may not be sticky customers.
Speaker 3:It's's not sticky customers.
Speaker 1:And the other thing is it's not a reflection of how your product's performing. Whereas working for those reviews, working trying to understand how can we improve, and we collected feedback a lot, just trying testing and iterating product to get to where we are and we came up with a formula Of we got so good at that, alhamdulillah, we managed to stay top eats for a long time. Even there was one point at Uber Eats when we lost all our ratings. They gave us a new account. Why did that happen.
Speaker 1:It was something with the merchant and there's some technical issues. But even after that you get three months to get to top eats Like three months of track record, and we got it again in three months. So by then we got confident that we've got the processes right, we've got the quality assurance right to make sure that we're going to get this Incredible.
Speaker 3:Incredible. Does that take us to the point in the story where something potentially quite devastating happens? I might be priming this.
Speaker 2:You're going to have to jog my movie.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, of course so basically as you picked up the drink I think that's it exactly. So the crisis in the middle east, the crisis in gaza begins um many of us have many businesses start to adopt a practice of boycotting and meaningfully moving away from certain brands who have allied themselves with israel. One of those brands is Coca-Cola. So you decided you were only going to stock Salaam Cola, which specifically donates, I think, 10% of its revenues to people around the world, including those in Palestine. Now people discovered this and what happened then.
Speaker 1:I remember I was still at the restaurant at the time and we started because we monitor our performance quite closely. People discovered this and what happened then? I remember I was still at the restaurant at the time and we started because we monitor, like our performance quite closely. Initially we just got like a one-star review with no comments and just thought that's odd, because we investigate as well If something's going wrong. We want to understand, yeah, what's happening, what's happened and how do we prevent this from happening? Sure, and that's what we did, uh, and like we're not getting like any customer that like we're like we're asking stuff, like no one could remember this kind of customer or delivery with those names. And then we just got, we started getting a couple more and it was because some of the accounts were like they were reviewing the same restaurants so you could you notice that some of that there's a pattern
Speaker 1:there's a pattern and that. And then we got one that kind of confirmed what it was, which is a review, uh, which took a screenshot of our menu on uber eats and specifically referring to salam cola, saying I don't want any. Uh, and you what was? The food industry should not be involved in politics. And pretty clear that they were targeting us for Salaam Kola Right. Initially it sucked Like. Initially we thought, okay, we work hard for our views. We don't want this to happen. What can we do? Right?
Speaker 1:For me, I was shocked Like you're trying to target a restaurant in Tahamlets which was predominantly one of the probably one of the most pro-palestinian boroughs yeah, of course, in london you see flags everywhere, you see graffiti, all kinds of stuff, exactly, exactly, and you're trying to, you're trying to target us really. So, and that's when we put out a um, just a, a tweet, um just asking for, like the we worked hard on community, building community and and the uh, the community kind of supported us back. I remember we just put it out that we're just getting started to get review bomb by people who didn't like our pro-palestinian starts. Yeah, we started getting we like within the first 12 hours, we started getting over like 200 five-star reviews. Wow, supporting us and community really backed us.
Speaker 1:Then the thing for me started becoming like, especially like I was so shocked at trying to target us. It was like, actually, we should flip this around, and it should. We should be about us sending a message that we're on, we're unapologetic about this, and it's one of the messages, especially when I think about it later on. Actually, let's get to that later on. But yeah, we thought we need to come up with our own response.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:And that's when we decided, alhamdulillah, we managed to turn around the whole campaign within four days where we created we created this campaign. Uh, we launched this brand new burger and we decided we partnered with muslim aid to donate all the profits for it. For a week, we also partnered with salam cola. They gave us a brand, uh, their uh. They supported us, gave us loads of cola and their water and we started giving those out. Wow, so, like if you're going to target us for it, we're going to partner.
Speaker 1:we're going to join together and we're starting a solidarity for Muslim businesses as well, putting it out there and yeah, we managed to turn around this campaign within a couple of days, ran it for a week, raised over 4,000, alhamdulillah for Muslim Aid. That was our way to send a statement right, look very firmly.
Speaker 3:Alhamdulillah For Muslim aid. That was our way To send a statement Right and that Look Very firmly we are taking a stand, yeah, and you can't bully us. You can't bully us.
Speaker 1:That was the thing. You can't bully us, and I think, I think that's Very important To understand. I think Especially when, sometimes, we feel Intermediated Very quickly. Right, we feel intermediated very quickly as Muslims, as immigrants as well.
Speaker 3:Yes, I think, because it's like look, there's an immigrant mentality I think it comes from, especially when you have parents who've just moved to this country or they're the first generation. They don't want to stand out. They don't want to do anything, to rock the boat or draw attention or anything like that. So it's just kind of fit in, don't do anything that might bring something down upon us. Exactly so how did your dad?
Speaker 2:react my dad didn't know. Does he know now? Okay?
Speaker 1:like. For me it was just like, let's figure out a response, let's try him, yeah, because we can turn this into something right. And like, uh, alhamdulillah, we. It was, um, if we can turn this into a statement. And the bigger thing for me is that especially this is one of the wider missions of Simply Smash that we wanted and it's show other Muslim business owners there's a better way of doing things. For me, especially when I entered the food industry, I was quite dissatisfied with a lot of how other Muslim business owners operate. What were you saying? It was a ride of things where, like, their values were not coming into their businesses, like I thought, whether it be using, like young, young, impressionable women, their content, just low cost them as is yeah.
Speaker 1:Or like using a lot of music in their content and in store just blaring it out. I remember going to one restaurant and the restaurant was empty Muslim stuff. It's Maghrib time. I need to play Super Maghrib Restaurant's empty Music's blaring. They're not going to turn off music, they're not going to let me pray, so it was like these are the kinds of things that we saw. That was kind of dissatisfying and we wanted to like. The thing is if we, if we can show there's a better way of doing things the thing about the food industry if something works you'll see that, you know.
Speaker 3:You know that everyone else is going to.
Speaker 1:So if we had that in mind, like I'm going to do this I love using my creativity to build businesses, but if there's a way that we can put our values onto this, stamp our values onto this. The hope is that if you're going to take inspiration from the way we run things, also take the fact that we're doing it with our values right, and the mission is to set a standard, a new standard of how to operate businesses. Especially the thing with the food business is a lot of Muslim customers.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like. That's your audience, of course. So if your audience is already Muslim, why are you not going to use Muslim values to operate as?
Speaker 3:well, I think there's so many parallels with FinTech as well, which is why I love the idea that you said data-driven burgers. I don't know how many people in the food industry do use data points like that and create food almost in a scientific way?
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3:As well as in the Islamic finance space. I think financial services, along with food, are two of the things that many Muslim customers vote with their wallets towards, because halal exists within food, halal exists within finance, and you know, I think it's been better in the islamic finance space. There's a bit more cohesion. There's so few of us anyway. Um, it's been easier for us to take a stance on that and in that similar vein, inshallah, we're really looking forward to launching our boycotting product in a few weeks time as well.
Speaker 1:But yeah gosh, so what a crazy roller coaster that was yes, you, you make a good point and I actually want to revisit um something that you mentioned was um the immigrant mentality point you said, uh, I think sometimes we have a lot of fears that if we just talk about it you'd see that some of them are quite irrational.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:For me when I realized something about the food industry, especially working on here, that there's an opportunity here. There's an opportunity. My whole supply chain is actually Muslim Muslim butchers. We can get different items from people who have our values. So if my customer base is also Muslim, if I'm not depending on anything right, there's nothing actually silencing me, apart from myself.
Speaker 3:And also it's harder for someone to attack you or bully you. That's exactly it In that similar way, you can almost speak without fear because it's like, okay, you can't hit me where it hurts, which is, you know, my wallet, my business.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and that's one of the things that we want to do with this brand as well that like there's a unique opportunity here to be outspoken in ways that not many brands can be. Yeah, exactly, so there's an opportunity to be outspoken, and the brand voice that I think about sometimes I've done this well, for example is like Ben Jerry's Like they can speak about social justice and that's incorporated within their brand right, yes.
Speaker 1:And that's why we want to do something similar with Simply Smash right, Talk about the issues that matter to us and you use, because we're an industry that we don't have that dependency we can be outspoken with. Not many other brands can be in the food industry For sure, and yeah, that's one of the cool things about the food industry Incredible.
Speaker 3:So we mentioned that we kind of whizzed past this. But tell me about this burger, right? So the Wagyu beef. I've never done like a food review type thing so.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to do it, but you said each of the ingredients was inspired. Was it by a family member or no? That's all our menu items.
Speaker 1:So our menus um our menu is quite small in general. Okay, uh, feel free to eat while I talk, yeah, so, if you notice, when you went to simply smash, we had a very simple menu. We had only three burgers in this limited item. But yeah, that's because we tested and iterate. Each one and every different menu item is is tested and iterated by different members of the family. So, like this has part of me my brother on it. Like my brother made the white sauce that's inside this burger, okay, and my bubby. So my brother's wife. The wagyu patty is one of the things that the patty is really good.
Speaker 3:By the way, it's like really sweet, like like a brioche type. You know, I don't have many burgers so people are like, oh they're. You know, maybe they're meant to be like that, but yeah it's. It's really really good and the sauce isn't overwhelming either. What I've found is like, with a lot of burgers, when you bite into the sauce it just gets everywhere.
Speaker 1:That's why we call it simply smash actually because we felt like there were so many Burgers were getting so complicated. I was a big burger eater. I ate a lot of burgers.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Especially when I was 18. I was going out with my friends, like once a week, twice a week, going out trying different burger shops. You start getting burgers that just get more and more outrageous, right? You get like fried egg, hash brown.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Different things. You're just chucking everything away at one point. So the point the way we came the way, moreover, came up with the name simply smashed was but the best burgers are the ones that are simple. Go back to good ingredients, go back to create sauces, flavors. That complements the staple, right, the bun, the, but the bun and the meat and the sauce. So, um, yes, the idea is simplicity and we try to incorporate that into different so did you make the patty?
Speaker 3:Was that your input?
Speaker 1:My input yes. So my input was the patty and then also the brisket. Okay, the 12-hour smoked Angus black Angus brisket that we use in this so we get smoked, smoked, and it comes together with the Swaggy Patty to make this burger Incredible.
Speaker 3:Incredible, marshall. Well, you've outdone yourself. What's your feedback? Tell me Genuinely. I'd probably give it like an 8.5. Okay, an 8.5 out of 10. I'm only saying that because I haven't finished it yet, but yeah, which is very high for me for a burger. My one complaint about burgers in general this isn't going to be like this is a money podcast. Why are we talking about burgers? So if you're listening, I encourage you to go onto YouTube and watch. It's a much more visual experience, this one.
Speaker 3:It is that the patty often doesn't taste very good. You'll have the sauce, which is there the bun, which is there, but they're doing the heavy lifting for the actual meat, whereas the actual meat, yeah uh, whereas here the meat is the star of the show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Like when you say it's been smoked for 12 hours, you can taste it. Good, right, you can tell that maybe 8.5 is too low. I don't know, we'll decide by the end. It's been sitting. It has been sitting here for an hour yeah, since I, since I got it.
Speaker 3:So, but yeah, it's, uh, it's really really good. So what's the future of simply smash now? You survived the review bombing. The community rallied behind you to to support you. You're now the number one reviewed burger joint in london for four months running. Yeah, uh, what's next? You have this one site in my land.
Speaker 1:Yes, you want to open more that's what we're looking at right now. Uh, I think we've been working for the past year and, to be fair, like, if we wanted, we could have started expanding six, uh, six months ago, okay, but I think we really one thing about us that we, we don't want to rush things, so we've been spending the year perfecting our offerings, perfecting what we've built simply smashed sure and and now we're feeling confident that we're ready to grow and ready to scale.
Speaker 1:So yes, inshallah, we aim for it to be an important year for us.
Speaker 3:Okay, incredible inshallah. So you launched, came up with the idea. In 140 days you generated a £250,000 turnover in the first year.
Speaker 2:Yes, I, was back then yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, wow.
Speaker 3:And then now you have, is it seven stars.
Speaker 1:Actually, you're probably getting that from my linkedin from linkedin.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sorry it's quite outdated. Now we've grown quite a bit. I'd say, how many people do we have now around? Like 10 staff, 10, 50, 10 to 12 staff, right? Now okay yeah, we're growing. We've strapped our way to what we are completely bootstrapped yeah, so we didn't even start from zero. We started from the red, but Alhamdulillah, we've gotten to where we are and I think it's time to grow now.
Speaker 3:So this is a debate that I've asked the last few guests. Abdur Rahman was on a couple of weeks ago, from Pillars we had Shannaz Nawaz, who was on as well from the founder of nia app. Yeah, they have very different views on growth, of course one, the former saying you should bootstrap all the way, the latter saying you should take funding. It's the only way to move quickly and make as much impact as possible. What's your view on it?
Speaker 1:I, I don't have a direct view of one way or the other. I think it depends on the industry, depends on the situation kind of thing. For example, one of the ways that is very common to grow and it's one of the ways we were initially considering was to franchise the Simply Smash brand.
Speaker 3:I got a few requests. When people found out I was interviewing you, people saying oh is he? Looking to franchise.
Speaker 2:I want to open something up in Oxford.
Speaker 3:I want to do something in Warwick. So yeah, I think it's on the table.
Speaker 1:So yeah, we've had a lot of requests on that. If we do offer a franchise product, I want to make sure it's perfect for the franchisees. But one of the things especially I noticed with the franchise model that a lot of people, a lot of businesses, are growing very quickly. It's very hard to regulate the quality, very hard to change.
Speaker 1:So I think right now, this could change. We're still evaluating. This is generally just still a discussion we're having right now. This could change. We're still evaluating. This is generally just still a discussion we're having right now. But I think the priority is how do we make sure that we scale in a way that maintains equality, maintains what we've built, and we're very, very careful about that.
Speaker 3:So that seems to be. You want to ensure you're maintaining as much control as possible, but it's bootstrapping is the way. I'm not trying to push you for that, but that seems to be.
Speaker 1:We're evaluating options right, Like you said, I think, even if we do, for example, race or go through the avenue and then franchise later on. But we want to be very confident that we've we've replicated this really well and then, until until we've done that, and when we've done that, inshallah, then we'd like, we would want, uh, we'd consider franchising.
Speaker 3:I was in silicon valley recently and I saw something I hadn't seen before, yeah, which was a, a robot pizza maker, a van thing, where basically it was a van, where apparently there was no one inside the van but there was a big touch screen and you would go on and you would order your pizza and then it would come up and create the pizza and provide the pizza with you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, did not taste good right at all, and I'm pretty sure there was someone inside, but I don't know did. Are you ever inspired by what's happening over there in america, whether it's with franchising or the way they're doing things? Because when I think of franchise burgers, I think mr beast you didn't well, it didn't go well it didn't go well. What happened there?
Speaker 1:it's the thing I just mentioned right now the quality. They didn't manage to keep that and it's one of the reasons why like I don't say for the lawsuit with mr beast, where is he getting? Sued.
Speaker 1:No, mr beast is suing the distribution partner oh, really okay because they did in a way that they're maintaining equality and um, yeah, it's, it's one of the things right, if you franchise, you need to make sure the quality of your products stays there. Um, it's interesting because this conversation, and it's one with if we do it, we want to do it right, if we do the franchise like our aspirations would be like giving the best franchise opportunity to franchisees. But one of the things I saw, like I remember going to like a investor meet for a franchise of another burger joint, really just doing a bit of competitive analysis, but but, but, yeah, like, and their offering was you'll see, these guys they've come from a corporate background as well. It's quite flashy. They were trying to scale this brand and it's something that I've noticed where, because they come in quite flashy, they invest a bit on how their brand looks, a bit more on content, the underlying, but they didn't focus much on the underlying product and it almost seems like a focus is on getting as many franchises going right.
Speaker 2:Try and make your money.
Speaker 1:That was like two years ago. Now that brand doesn't exist. They sold a couple of franchises and none of them have succeeded really well it seems like coming back to your background in product yeah it's all about the quality of the underlying product and the value that you're giving to the customer and that's the difficulty.
Speaker 1:Um, physical products are tough. Yeah, because the thing about digital products? Yeah, you work on them and then you don't even think about scaling that much, right, because you've built something and you know everyone's gonna have the same experience. If I made a really nice burger, and that's it, you need to make sure you can make this really nice burger a thousand times, ten thousand times. That means it's actively at the front of your mind. That's the difference between launching a physical product.
Speaker 1:That's really good, yeah, yeah yeah, and that's what we've been working and refining on, successfully, focused on replicating that. Inshallah, when we do look to scale, that's one of the things that's always at the forefront of our mind making sure that we have, as we grow, we grow with people that understands our mission, understands what we're trying to do here, trying to understand why we attribute so much of our success to our values, and then, yeah, take it from there. So, that's why.
Speaker 1:It's one of the reasons why I've been a bit more apprehensive. Maybe a bit, but we just want to be confident. We scaled it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1:And then we can think about those.
Speaker 3:We're running short on time but I do want to do a quick shout out to my, my co-founder and our cto rapan razzi, because before he was at kestrel he actually tried to run a, a burger place in um, in malaysia yes, so malaysia they had a concept of street burgers which were really, really popular.
Speaker 3:Coming out people making them literally on the street side and he tried to make it into a proper business model, launch with the restaurant and, I think, just like you said, focus on quality. I think with them they over focused on quality and they missed out all the business side of things. So the operations fell apart. They weren't actually making any money on any of the burgers but at the same time they were investing in I think they started investing in like the factory and some of the machinery, before they even had made sure that each of the burgers being produced was positive from a unit economics perspective and, unfortunately, even though they had like four outlets I think I'm remembering that right or fun four outlets, it fell apart from that so I guess it's a balance of both worlds 100 and that's why, um, when I talk about, like, having the right blend of skills, that's why me and my brother like, yes, perfect in that sense, because I'm more like your co-founder.
Speaker 1:Okay, I love getting to the product of things. Yes, get into, let's, let's just make something really cool and let's grow it. And that's that's me, and my brother will take our. Okay, then we'll take it. How can we make this viable? And, um, and that's how, that's how we really work well together incredible yeah so it's like, naturally, we've gotten those kind of skills from each.
Speaker 1:He works at Chargepoint as a group portfolio manager at the moment as well. So, yeah, we've both gotten these kind of skills where they work really well to establish businesses as well. And, yeah, looking forward to incredible what's next?
Speaker 3:well, like I said, we're running short on time, bro, but thank you so much. My pleasure to finish off, yes, what has been the absolute high point of your career so far. Sorry, we like to end on a big, big one do you know what?
Speaker 1:for me, it's money, money and that sales numbers. They're nice, they're flashy, but it's never been that for me. One of the things that really excite me and one of the reasons why I was talking about mini-deed being one of the times I had the most fun is, just like most of the Kajaria metrics, like having seen that kind of impact. I think that excites me a lot more. Sorry, the what metrics.
Speaker 3:Like Sadaqah Kajaria metrics. Oh the Sadqa.
Speaker 1:Jariyat. So, for example, one of the high points for me was probably during Ramadan, during the peak of Mini-D. It went viral, super viral at the time and you're just seeing so many users coming in and they're all using this. And don't get me wrong, this is not a good time. It's happening during Taraweeh.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:So it's not the greatest time for this to be happening. Why were people on socials?
Speaker 2:What were you guys doing? It was international.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's the excitement that, like we've built something People are using and actually donating money for you yeah.
Speaker 1:It's not just like donating. Once, even the community there's still a community on there that's actually donating pennies, donating, whether it's, it's not the numbers that count, it's the people that count. It's the people that the fact that you can build things that continue being a set of jacarjaria for you, that's the most exciting part, like for me, even for Simply Smashed. One of the reasons why I was super big on like community building is that's what excites me right, and it's like even just as a one joint right now. It's inspired things like other restaurants also using like Quran recitation, like we do in our content. It's inspired other restaurants to actually have a whole prayer room set up in their restaurant as well, and they've told us that's what they've done. And it's inspired other restaurants to do like sisters only nights. That's one thing we've started doing no way.
Speaker 1:We started doing a space, a time where only sisters can eat in one thing We've started doing no way. We started doing A space, a time where only Sisters can eat in, and other restaurants have started doing that as well. So these are the things that we can set right and these are these are the things. These are the things that, ultimately, is going to be the legacy, and For me, those are the kind of High points. Those are the things. Build something like that can leave behind a new standard for how Muslims businesses operate and and what I've realised a lot is, the best way to want other businesses or other things to operate is you just have to show them a better way and if you do it well, they're naturally going to follow and
Speaker 3:that's what we're trying to do here, incredible Saqib, thank you so much for your time, my pleasure.
Speaker 1:As-salamu alaykum Wa alaykum as-salam.
Speaker 3:Thank you for listening to the Muslim Money Talk podcast. If you like what you heard, then please subscribe to Muslim Money Talk. Wherever you might have been listening to this, give us a like and share it with someone who you think might be interested. It really, really helps us out. Thank you, as-salamu alaykum, and see you next time.