It’s a busy afternoon on Grange Road in Birkenhead.
The sun beats down on the hordes of shoppers as they mill through the town’s main shopping district. Sandwiched among some of the high-street’s big hitters is KRL General Store & Cafe, distinguishable by a temporary yellow sign tethered to the building’s facade.
Inside, though there are some empty shelves, this is a place bursting at the seams with ideas, hope and possibility. The shop only opened its doors in July, but KRL has been more than a year in the making.
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It’s run by the Ali family, who moved to Wirral from Italy in 2016, having originally descended from Bangladesh. 23-year-old Lucky is the business brain behind the shop and she’s hoping it will help to breathe new life into Birkenhead’s town centre.
“We started looking for a place in April last year,” Lucky tells the ECHO. “In March 2020, my parents lost their job due to covid.
"My dad was trying to find a suitable vacancy but it was so difficult because he didn’t have the digital skills in order to apply and write his own CV. I was in my second year of uni at the time and I was helping him apply online for different jobs.
"It was a time with constant uncertainty and it was really difficult to find a suitable role for him.”
Lucky’s dad, Akbar, had previously worked for a major Indian restaurant, and his experience in the hospitality sector helped to spark an idea for the family. “We started thinking about opening a business but we didn’t know where to start,” Lucky said.
“We learned about a new enterprise allowance through the Job Centre and applied for a start-up loan. This place used to be a Subway which closed down before covid, but we really liked the place and thought it would be a good place to start our business.
"I always had the community in mind because I felt we as a family had lost that human interaction during covid, not seeing friends and family members, so I wanted a central location that could be a community hub. We wanted to be somewhere where we could see people and they could see us.”
Despite being a full-time biomedical sciences student at the University of Liverpool, Lucky set to work collating a viable business plan, but the family encountered a major stumbling block when their loan application was rejected. Lucky said: “I didn’t know what to do and where we were going to get the capital from.
"During the pandemic, I worked in an NHS covid lab as a lab scientist and I decided to use all of my savings to set up the shop. Everything you see is mainly from the savings I had because I wanted to see this place become something and bring this idea to life.
"The idea of community has never left me and I want this to be, not just a business, but something where everything starts.”
The pandemic and a raft of financial complications hampered the family’s plans to start trading when they took over the lease of the premises in December last year, however the conveyor belt of obstacles the Ali’s have faced has only made Lucky more determined to make KRL a success.
She said: “As a family we wanted to overcome all the barriers. We used all the obstacles as motivation to keep going even though it was really hard.
"It’s lovely to work together with my parents. There are fewer and fewer family businesses now so we wanted to revive that lost tradition.
“Our aim is to provide affordable, healthy homemade food. To make it affordable for the customers, we have to find products at the right price without compromising on quality."
Striking that balance between quality and affordability is especially difficult considering the family don’t have the capital to buy the large quantities of stock stipulated by the wholesalers. Not having access to a car is also another factor that makes stocking up the shelves in the store a challenge.
“When you’re starting, you don’t know what the demand is going to be like so you don’t want to order large quantities and have it all go to waste,” Lucky said.
“Being a family run business, we don’t have lots of contacts and people who can help us with different things. We also don’t have a car or a van because we currently can’t afford it, so it’s very hard for us logistically to buy large quantities of food from the wholesaler.”
Although stocking up on goods is a work in progress, the immense effort the Ali’s have invested into KRL is apparent in the shop’s every fibre. The building is bright and welcoming, a heavenly aroma wafting from the temporary counter which is laden with home-cooked curries and trays of crispy, golden lentil pakora.
Lucky said: “At the moment, my mum is the only chef. This building doesn’t have a kitchen area because there’s no gas set up. Everything is made at home. My mum cooks it in the morning and brings it to the shop. Then she goes home and starts preparing lunch which she brings here for 12pm.”
Akbar, who’s been listening to his daughter’s impassioned recounting of the family’s journey with a look of complete, unbridled pride, jumps up as a customer shuffles through the door. Despite the vast array of authentic Bangladeshi food on offer, the man’s order is “beans on toast..with an egg on top.”
Akbar sets to work plating up the goods, as Lucky explains how the shop is already embedding itself into the fabric of the community.
“The response has been lovely,” she said. “It’s really overwhelming for us because we started from nothing and the love of everyone who visits us is amazing. We’ve been relying on word of mouth because we currently don’t have fixed signage or marketing campaign.
"We have people coming in saying their friends have told them about us, and they want to come in and try authentic asian food, so word of mouth is our current marketing.
"I love to meet people and talk to people. Its not just about the business its about building community. I want people to come in here and feel connected and get to know people.”
After graduating in July, Lucky is working full-time for the University of Liverpool as an enterprise and employability executive, and is also starting the application process for medical school. Her packed schedule is not hampering her grand ideas for KRL though, and she talks of plans to work with local schools and charities as well as running a Coffee Connect initiative, where she can put skills from her day job into practice to help people in the local area enhance their employability.
She said: “We want something big to start from here, but we need support and local organisations to collaborate with us and give us a chance and see what we can do as a family.
“McDonalds is on the corner but it acts as a promotion for us because people passing by to go there also see us. We’re not here to compete with other businesses, rather complement them and build relationships with neighbouring businesses. The more businesses open around here, the more life that will be breathed into Birkenhead.
“We win when everyone else is winning, so this business should be a collaboration with everyone else in the local area. That will be part of the regeneration of Birkenhead.”
The customer in the corner finishes his beans on toast, giving Akbar a big thumbs up as he stands up to leave. On his way out, he turns and looks around the shop.
“I’ll be back,” he smiles. “Maybe I’ll have a curry next time.”
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