London’s infamous kiosks and a driven overseas student make history…
The abandoned and unused iconic telephone booths across the UK caught 25-year-old Tayyab Shafiq’s attention and motivated him to turn the neglected kiosks into a food take away.
The sustainability model of utilizing unused places to produce commercially viable products prompted the engineering graduate to rent booths from the Red Kiosk Company, which works with BT to provide telephone boxes to local businesses. Tayyab says “I wanted to give them a new lease of life. It was my cultural surroundings that inspired me to combine my two worlds into a business. While living in London I wanted to preserve British history yet incorporate my Pakistani origin to bring this concept to life”.
The idea to turn one of London’s iconic telephone booths into a takeaway business had been on his mind since graduating in 2017.Although the venture was not entirely launched until August 2020.Tayyab says: “the fallout in restaurant dining industry, due to the pandemic, customers are redirected towards takeaways. People are very keen to choose takeaways during this time making our businesses flourish”.
What may have thought to be “small side-hustle” for Tayyab, quickly took headlines by storm and featured in The Sun and Mail Online calling it “the world’s smallest curry house”.
Tayyab believes this idea will continue to attract clients until dining services reopen and even in the future it would attract tourists because of its link to British heritage. He says “what makes my venture unique is that all the packaging products used in takeaway is with lined with bacteria and germ eliminating protection lining, making it safer than other competitors”
Initially, there was a lot of relevant planning around planning permission, lease and basic investments to make his dream possible. Knowing the short history of the telephone booth is highly necessary before putting them into use. To ensure that it passes all the health and safety requirements.
Establishing a new venture in the time of a global economic downturn was not easy. There were not many people willing to invest in the idea. He says: “At the beginning although people were fascinated by the idea, they did not want to contribute to its conception because of how niche the idea seemed to them”.
Besides his initiatives to transform kiosks, Tayyab is the co-founder of a non-profit organization, “One Million Meals”, which provides with hot meals to feed the NHS staff & vulnerable families during Covid-19.
As for the future, he plans to scale up his idea and open a restaurant in London following the
basis of creating a sustainable environment. His message to everyone in the same position has been to follow your passion, he says: “Go for projects that create impact rather than money – money is the by-product of my efforts, if there is something new out there – it will definitely draw the right attention”.
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