296. Meet the Bombay Pizza Founder with 10+ Locations w/ Anisa Khan | Bombay Pizza

0:00Amardeep Parmar:Okay, so Brands Inside Out, we've got Anisa here today. She's famous for being on The Apprentice, but the main reason we've got her here is because of how well Bombay Pizza is doing. So tell us about Bombay Pizza. Well, firstly, thank you for having me. So Bombay Pizza is a South Asian fusion brand. We do stuff like chicken tikka masala on a pizza, chile panini on a pizza. We started actually five years ago as just a dark kitchen, and now we have 10 locations all across London, and our 10th one is in Camden Market. it. So starting as a dark kitchen, right? Why did you start in that way? Well, honestly, when I started my business, like a lot of people, it was meant to be a side hustle.

0:36I actually started during COVID. So I had a graduate program lined up at Accenture doing tech consulting. And they basically postponed me because of COVID. So I had all this free time where I was like, what should I do? So let me just start a business. And so my background is my family do have a restaurant. So for the last 50 years, it's like Indian Bangladeshi restaurant. And I thought, okay, what can I do to like add value create create something new and that's when Bombay Pizza started so literally I I spent money on like a pizza oven I hired an Italian man from Facebook and that was the start of Bombay Pizza um and yeah I kept it as like a dark kitchen for the first like four years uh just like side income and I was at a point in my life where I was like either I put effort into the business where I actually like try to grow out if possible or I just stick to corporate.

1:28And that was the year I actually applied to Apprentice. Because I was like, I probably need to get some investment, get some exposure out there. And since the show, it grew like 1000%. So from what started, like a little dark kitchen has now grown a lot.

1:40Amardeep Parmar:How is it like today when you're in charge of 10 shops versus those early days? I think the early days, it was very much like hands on. Like at one point, if I had staffing issues, which I did the first year, it was full of staffing issues. I remember I was literally taking the order, making the pizza myself and delivering it in my car. Just because in the beginning, you just don't have staff. You just need to get it running. So I was in the shop every day. And now at 10 locations, I guess my role is more management and overseeing everything. So I have 30 staff. I've got staff all across. They're the ones who are now on the ground.

2:17And my role is essentially just monitoring it, quality checking, and getting more customers.

2:23Amardeep Parmar:And when you come up with the name of Bombay Pizza and the concept, so if you said, okay, you're putting Indian ingredients into pizza and things like that, but you could have gone for so many different options, and I know you tried other options too. What made you go for Bombay Pizza as a brand and as a concept? Honestly, I think it's just a name that people understand. When you hear Bombay Pizza, you just know it's Indian style pizzas, right? And also, it sounds good. Like it rolls off your tongue like oh yeah I'm into Bombay pizza. And that was a big element. Another element is actually my dad in like the 80s and 90s had a takeaway called Bombay which was an Indian takeaway.

2:59It was like a random thing that he had. So like it had some heritage into like I guess my history. But it's one of the things that like I actually didn't think that hard about. It was just like okay I'm gonna start selling Indian pizzas what sounds good oh Bombay pizza oh cool just ran with it so I obviously went to your

3:18Amardeep Parmar:like new shop as well that you've got um in Camden area so I've seen at the menu how do you come up with ideas for the menu so obviously you must start off like a certain set of um options you had how do you think about that yeah I think for me it was just like going going back into like my family history of running the Indian Bangladeshi restaurant is I knew our clientele because I used to be a waitress for like three years or whatever's on the side during like school and stuff and I would do the orders and like so I know what the most popular stuff is and I can understand the taste buds of the clients so like for example CTM I've copyrighted it now as well but like that's just a chicken tikka masala pizza and like chicken tikka masala is like number one curry dish so that was very easy as our core menu like had to do this buy a chicken's popular for a chicken pizza so a lot of it's just like what will the people like and then in terms of there's one like the khan's kima special i just like kima a lot and i think like my mom at home when she'd make kima she put like peas in it and um just from my own personal taste bud making that pizza and again like chili paneer i love chili paneer when i put on the pizza like even though that's not like actually one of the most popular curry dishes for us at all i just knew it tastes good and that became the number one bestseller for Garbage Jane pieces.

4:36So it's a mix of clients and my own personal tastes.

4:40Amardeep Parmar:And then the Plants of the Apprentice, what made you? Why? Yeah, for me, so I loved The Apprentice since I was, since first season. I was seven when it first came out. And I've loved older siblings. I think most seven-year-olds don't watch The Apprentice, but maybe they do now. But yeah, I love the show. And it was one of those things that I always had a feeling I'd go on it at some point, but not knowing at seven how I'm going to do it. So yeah, the situation was that I had put my pizza for a few years. I actually lived in Japan. So then when I came from Japan, I was like, I either continued the side hustle and like applied to corporate jobs, or I like, I would say like, go out and get investment.

5:22Amardeep Parmar:What were you doing in Japan? I was teaching English. My whole life story is a bit random. um another side note is like my childhood dream is also to live abroad at some point and then I learned Japanese and so that's why I lived there for a year best year but when I came back I was just like okay pick corporate or business okay business I need investment what should I do oh yeah the apprentice so like it's kind of it's one of those things like it felt like fate in a way because it's like the perfect time in my life and then the application process is quite it's quite hard for like 16 rounds just to get into the show right but obviously I got in so like I got through all of that like quite easily so it felt like the right moment in my life and do so how much do you think Apprentice helped you beyond just immediate exposure what do you think you learned from it was it did it make you better as an entrepreneur in any way yeah I think one thing it did it gave me a lot of confidence as myself and as an entrepreneur in a way because obviously I got through 12 rounds of like almost getting fired and like I messed up so much as well but it's like I think it gave me the confidence in the sense of Lord Sugar, Brandice Brady and Tim they all really liked me like from the get-go and obviously to the end and having people that you look up to like the fact that like Lord Sugar's a billionaire and he was like he told me I was good he's like I think you're good I think you're very smart and then like Brandice Brady she was so complimentative to me as well just like you'll be so successful and to hear that from people you look up to that was a massive like like help for my confidence and but as you said the biggest thing was definitely exposure like you just get propelled to the national spotlight like I was literally a small dark kitchen like on the side to like now people across the UK know who I am like people travel like seven hours people flew in from other countries like just to try the pizza so concert like that was crazy to me how has that been as well so like that like you said you didn't much following much media exposure before that so all of a sudden national tv and people recognizing you yeah how has that transition been um i would say good and bad in the sense of like i'm very grateful for what has brought me and like what it's done to my business i think for me naturally I'm not necessarily someone who wants a spotlight like I'm not like if if I didn't go on the show I didn't have Bombay pizza I wouldn't have become like an influencer for example like it's not I don't necessarily like the attention but I'm also grateful for it because like for what it leads to the business and I think it was kind of weird because I think I remember I remember when the first episode came out the show thinking that okay this is it I'm not famous sort of thing I remember I told all my staff we're gonna get so busy like lines are gonna come out the door you guys ready and like the first episode airs and quietest day like so like our sales were our lowest I'm like oh so that was hard as well because like expectation was higher than my what happened so then I think as the weeks went by I was humbled and then um the semi-finals is when the thousand percent growth happened but it got to a point where like I wasn't prepared and that was a massive struggle because I think people think it sounds great like oh to be sold out to have lines out the door like that is I guess every business's dream but the reality of it is it's so difficult and it's that was the most stressful time in my whole entire life like I didn't actually sit back and like appreciate it in a way because I was just like stressed like every day I woke up like almost shaking so I'm like what am I gonna do um how do we like produce a service like being sold out is actually not good for a business because like it means you're not making money.

9:09You're not actually selling because there's nothing to sell. So like it was just the most craziest, high pressure, high stress time of my life.

9:18Amardeep Parmar:How did you deal with it then? So like... You just have to go through it. It's like one of those things I was like... I remember when it first happened, like I didn't... I will never forget this, but it's like the day after semifinals, like our dine-in completely packed out. There was a line at the door. We didn't even answer the phone. The phone broke because people kept calling. And then like we had to turn off all the machines, like, we just did the rubrics, all turned off. We had to turn off our website. Because it was just like seeing people were like physically there. And then it was a moment where I was just like, and I was like, people were happy that, I think people were happy just to see me, because they saw me on the TV.

9:51So they, most people were like, OK. But like, it was like two to three hour wait for a pizza, which I know is insane, but we couldn't physically like just do it. And then it was hard because it's like, I'm the owner. Right? So when you panic, like if you have a job, you work with someone, you're like, OK, the owner will help and fix this whereas i was panicked i looked around i was like everyone's been going to meet to figure out and i genuinely like didn't know what to do and i didn't have like the support because i think people think that the like the apprentice they support us there's no actual support for your business whatsoever right it's not like even though i had logical contact i'm not gonna message him like hey help me out because it's like like no one knows what to do and like even though my family had a business like the restaurant it was never that busy so it was just really difficult because it's like, I don't know what to do.

10:39There's no one around me who knows what to do. Just do it. So it was just like, slowly we turn things back on. For me, I was communicating. I made a video. It got over 100 ,000 views. Just being like, hi. It felt like a, I'm sorry. Like a public apology video being like, we are overwhelmed. Sorry, we are trying our best. I had to make an apology video. But it was difficult because also at that time we got loads of bad reviews as well because I think majority of people were understanding but there's also a significant amount of people who are just like why they're taking so long I want to just like look around like and so it was it was just a lot of a lot of things coming at me at the same time and then I think for me it was like I think also as a business you don't want your hype to go down but I was I was kind of hoping I'm going to go down a little, not a lot, but a little bit, because it was unmanageable.

11:34And there's also things that are unmanageable for months. So I think people think that when the final came out, that's when I had one or two days of being busy. We had months and months of just getting through it, and then now our process is bad. We're still very busy, but we can handle it so much better than before.

11:51Amardeep Parmar:Because obviously, if you've got all this demand coming, you can't just suddenly open a new restaurant. it's not just like you can't just it's like a software for example you just sell more software the restaurant you've got to create a new one you've got to hire more staff you've got to have another pizza often you can't just magic that right yeah i remember i remember when i was busy this this person said something that hurt my feelings but they were just like you should have known like you should know you've been busy like why why are you prepared and i think one you can't really be prepared in the sense of like i was never to know how busy it would get and also i don't have the money yeah it's like a cost-wise right you've got you can't yeah just spend loads of money because all that fair demand doesn't come exactly it's like why are you having a pizza rabbit like a pizza up this cost like over 10 grand where was i gonna get the 10 grand for like from because this was so low before it's just like even to get the financing would have been a bit hard because it's like we didn't have the sales so one like i don't have the money to invest at that point and then i think people don't realize even staffing is i'm not gonna have 10 extra staff waiting.

12:54And then like, obviously the business grew and I got a lot of staff in, but all the staff were like incompetent. The first like, mumble say, obviously it's not their fault, they need training. And then that's what was crazy. I remember I hired a girl on the spot because she was just like, I'm looking for a job. I'll help you. And I was like, okay, you're hired. You should just start. And then like, she was just like, hi, welcome to One Big Pizza. And then obviously she didn't know anything. Lisa, what do I do? I'm like, I'm like, just do something. Just take the order. and then it was it was like the wild west i had a head tag because it was all the staff that i hired to help but they no one knew what was happening and like over time obviously everyone now knows like the systems but it was just crazy how has your model changed now so like from when did the last episode come out of rent this you're on uh last year april like that was okay so like we're recording this now end of january right yes it's been like nine months so what's changed in

13:43Amardeep Parmar:terms of your model so now you've got obviously a new like physical location yeah how else have changed it since then? One is just like it's a lot more efficient because we now have like even something simple like conveyor belt pizza oven we literally had like one thing we'd take in and out and someone had to watch it so like efficiency is much more efficient even like how we do like our toppings preparation like that part of it and then the restaurant the one we have now is pretty much the same it's like we're just more efficient and then now we have a lot more locations so So because we have the dark kitchens, we have people there.

14:18We have more revenue streams for them. And then it makes less traffic for our original location because then we can spread it out and actually manage each customer a lot better. And then we've got our place in Camden Market, which is our central London place. So one allows more people. It's easy to travel to because my first location is Wellington, which is like South London, but very hard to get to. And people aren't going to travel three hours all the time just have a pizza right they were willing to do it for like the apprentice final but they're not continuously going to do that so for us it's being more convenient location wise and kind of targeting strategic areas for business hello hello i hope you're enjoying the show so far i'm amadit palmer co-founder of bay hq and the host of this show for those of you who don't know bay hq is the

15:07Amardeep Parmar:community for high growth Asian heritage founders and investors in the UK. Over 7 ,500 people have attended our events, 200 people have been for our impact programs and obviously there's been over 250 episodes of this podcast. If you want to join us and take part in the programs and come to the events go to vahihq.com forward slash join. We also just released our first ever book called startups for outsiders which you can get amazon now and the link is in the bio hope to see you soon at event hope you enjoy the rest of the episode so as someone who's like never had a restaurant or a dark kitchen how do you decide like which path to go down and which one's kind of better for the business yeah i would say in terms of risk and leverage restaurant's a lot hard to get into um but the money you make in a restaurant has a potential to be a lot more right like if you have a restaurant you have dine-in collection delivery um you can definitely make a lot more money than with a dark kitchen so dark kitchen i think it's a good place if you just want to start you have a concept you have an idea you're just building out your brand because the costs are like so much less right and if it doesn't work out you lose a couple grand if a restaurant doesn't work out you go bankrupt like it's really high leverage um plus i think the biggest difference is the cost, the barrier to entry to both of them.

16:33And then I would say restaurants are better for brand recognition. A dark kitchen is actually very hard to market because it's like, hi, I have a pizza place. Where is it? Don't worry about that. Don't come. I come to you, right? It's so difficult to market it. And that's why Bombay Pizza. So I have 10 locations. The majority are still dark kitchens. And the reason I do that is because I've got the brand recognition now or the brand awareness. If you see Bombay Pizza, a lot of people know what we are. They follow us on social media or you need to just Google us. There's loads of news articles about us.

17:07So because we have that, now we're expanding through dark kitchens because the costs are lower. It's much more profitable. If I was starting out with a new business, it would have been very difficult to do it just a dark kitchen.

17:19Amardeep Parmar:Because obviously you did start up with a dark kitchen, right? So how did you get those first customers? Oh yeah, obviously it's possible. What I did, again, it's COVID time, that was like the scene. I posted a lot on Facebook, like my Wellington Facebook page. Like, hi, I'm Anissa and I sell pizzas, please buy. It was so funny on Facebook, you didn't take me reminders of what you've done in the past. And I'm like, oh, I've come quite a long way. This person, like, because a lot of it's just like, please try my pizzas, they're really good. But it worked out because that's how the local community knew, right?

17:51I mean, that's the thing about food businesses. It's different to a product business where like you are pretty much targeting your local area so is facebook groups putting on pages speaking to people right um so that was one big way because what was also good is i'd get an order and i wrote like a hand like a personally hand wrote a lesson i had like a little cue card thing like hi customer's name thanks so much for ordering i'm a new business i appreciate your support please leave us a review on google and share with everyone you know all the best anisa and like i literally hand wrote and you can tell but it's like it's not even like it was before the ai stuff and it was like but it might make a difference because i still have customers five years later post apprentice who say i remember i remember your card like i remember you did that right and that helped a lot growing out organically and then the other part is delivery apps so that's how majority are like because an aggravator right so a lot of people go on delivery looking for a place so that's where most dark kitchens thrive because you don't need to know where it's coming from they come to your door right um so we did that and then we did a lot of like marketing within the apps and like we did flash discounts and stuff like that but what i also did people were on the apps i also wrote them a hand in card being like please leave us a review please share and that's how like we had our substantial like first customer base so it was good because like after like the first year we're making decent profit with low effort because it was just had my little community i think another hard part of growing is i'm now obviously my costs are higher i'm stretched out a lot more.

19:23Amardeep Parmar:There's a lot of things going on that sometimes I do actually miss that first, second year business, but it's more hands-on in the way. Yeah, and you're also diversifying product range as well because you're having, is it the, I want to say frozen pizzas, or you're delivering people? Yes, it's kind of a separate model. So I do make pizza by post. So the pizzas are still fresh, but they're chilled. So we don't even freeze them. Like what happens is the order will come in. We only make them like three days of the week. The chef makes every pizza fresh and then we blast chill them and like we vacuum pack it.

19:59So then we send out next to delivery. So when the customer gets to the next day, the quality is pretty much the same as from the restaurant and we produce a final cook at home. So that's like, I guess, our product DTC model. And we use like Shopify. buy. It was different to everything else, like takeaway and restaurant side.

20:18Amardeep Parmar:What made you add that to your...? I think it was just the business opportunity of The Apprentice. I feel like I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't, if I didn't know I was going on national TV. Because I realised like, okay, I'm in the final. I need people to come. As I said, I didn't think it would be that many people. So I was like, for example, if someone's in Scotland or Wales, they most likely won't come to Wellington, right? How can I deliver my product to them? And then I was looking at online models. I think even in the Apprentice, the year before, there's a guy called Phil Turner. He did like pies by post, where he ships out pies, right?

20:54So my model is quite similar to his. So I just said, oh, he did it. Maybe I should do it too. So I literally created... It's kind of crazy. All my businesses were pretty much created in a week, from idea to launch a week or two. I was like, okay, Bombay Pizza by post is the other thing now. Got the website, got the Shopify. I got my brother to help me make the website. And then I got the packaging stuff in, launched it. And then I launched it like a few weeks before the final. So I had enough time to get a few orders to try it out. And obviously the day of the final, we got like a thousand orders within an hour.

21:30So that's how that business started.

21:32Amardeep Parmar:And then as we go forward as well, right? So I know you've got a lot of different ideas or things you could do. where would you say your focus is for the next couple of years let's say yeah so it's still a bumble pizza and we're actually franchising now so this year we have a few franchisees already so right now it's like i've got my 10 that i manage and then we're figuring out the the model for how to go like truly nationwide um yeah so yeah that's our focus the franchise model yes where are your 10 locations at the moment they're all in london so that's also why we able to expand quickly is because everything is sort of near my first door so i have like south london in wellington and then we have kingston streatham dulwich reigate fulham richmond um clapham so anyone doesn't know london that's all south at that point they're all like a few miles away from each other but they're close enough that i can go and supply to them but far away from enough for each other that they cover different delivery radiuses.

22:34And then we had the Temple in Camden Market, and that's our first one across the river. And then that one is an in-person one. So that one we're targeting people to come in. If they're in London anyway, it's much quicker to just go to the Bomber Peace in Camden than it is to come to Wellington. But yeah, those are my current locations. And then franchisees, we have one in Luton now. We have a few in East London coming. We have Southwest London. And so like the parts I haven't hit yet. And then our goal is also to get to Manchester and more up north. But we also have to do it in a strategic way because I could have accepted more people.

23:09But then I realised I actually can't supply it. So it's kind of like we had that massive growth. But how do we have sustainable growth? And that's kind of our next year or so just focusing on that part.

23:20Amardeep Parmar:So it's interesting because you said like how Egypt has been like taking you a week to idea to execute. And I think it was to hold so many people back and probably people listening. and I've had an idea for years that they're like, oh, it's not the right time. I'm not going to do it yet. Where do you think you got that confidence from to just execute and just go for it? Yeah, I think it's... I've always been relatively confident. And I think for me, it was... There was a timing element of... There was something that pressurised me. So I'll give you an example. So with the Bombay pizza, I didn't really say it before, but I actually started off with an Italian dark kitchen, like Italian pizzas.

23:55There's normal margarita, pepperoni, whatever you get everywhere else and that wasn't doing well but I was funding it all myself like through my savings and then I had to I almost fired my pizza chef because I was like it's not

24:06Amardeep Parmar:making any money I can't afford to keep paying for this Italian on Facebook to keep running it so I was in a point with that part it was very very early on where I was like either I just quit lessons and go back to corporate or I try to figure this out and I was I worked out that the number one best-selling pizza was the chicken tikka pizza from my other store so I was like why not make a whole entire brand around it and I gave myself the week because I was like I can't actually afford to pay for this guy longer um so in a week brand logo website delivery everything all the apps and just got that done so that was a time pressure that way and then it hit like after that week I launched it we made money straight away like it became profitable from that month and then again the by post the reason why i launched it so quickly was because i was only apprentice and like i can't wait let me just do it next like in three months time i know people aren't going to care as much so the best time is now so that's what pushed me to launch those ones um but i think it's best advice for any business because even for me it's like it gets to a point like in my camden market to launch that it was taking months and months of just doing contracts signage all this stuff that i was getting annoyed because it's like why is it not why it's not ready yet and i remember once you got the contract signed it was like okay i have got it wasn't it wasn't a week from a few weeks where i was just like doing it okay signage guy this guy you're hired you're doing this i'm making it happen but like yeah that's what you sort of have to do because it's better to have the business there and to make it better than it is to like spend years thinking about it.

25:43Same thing like my dark kitchens, I've got, the reason I've got 10 locations in a year is because it's just like my mindset of like, just get it done. Get it done and then improve it. Because like if I really wanted to, I had, I could have, not that I couldn't have actually done it, but I had an opportunity to open like 100 dark kitchens last year, which sounds so great conceptually, like wow, 100, but reality of it is a different game. All right, and then with opening each one it's pretty much decided like a few weeks before we're gonna open another one quickly just get everything done and that's where i'm at my turn now like the beginning stage of all the businesses were just quick and i that's what i'd recommend to people because then you can

26:22Amardeep Parmar:make it better you said like how your role is so different today right what do you think you enjoy most now what's the like bit that you're enjoying the most about but it's funny new version of you but i i enjoy the old version of me that's what i was that's what i was think sort of thinking about where it's like i get now that my role is so management um that like i spend most my time on like on whatsapp on my computer on my emails right that i actually enjoy the most going into the restaurant like saying hi to customers um and that's also like i put i'm so happy because like when i get my warranty location everyone knows who i am now because of like cool as a show right because there's such a buzz around me that like it's just nice to be like like hi how are you and then like they know me and like I feel like the whole I like the I think that's the best part of having any restaurant like in any area is that your community of people and we get to get to speak to them so that's what I enjoy the most um I guess other elements also like producing a new product for example like when we have a limited edition pizza because I think for me the best part of business is actually the beginning stage like the creating that's what I thrive because I I've got this ideas.

27:32I'm going to get things done. So it's like, oh, new pizza. What's the concept? How are we going to do it? Launching it. I enjoyed that a lot. I'm not into the whole mundane everyday checking thing.

27:44Amardeep Parmar:And it's all things when it comes to hiring, right? Because if you're like, same thing we've asked, I want to do the cool new stuff, right? I want to be maintaining the existing systems. And it's making sure you hire the right people to get in there. Yeah. And I know you've had, like, where you said you've hired the wrong people in the past and you've had to learn from that. What do you now look for when you're trying to hire people work internally yeah to be fair I'm still learning I'm so I was only recently I've been hiring people in terms of management level because I've gone like for the years we've had so many waiters and chefs and in terms of that it's more like it's more easy because it's like this is what you do just keep doing it kind of thing um I think hiring in terms of management and the stuff that I do now I think what I look for is like basic competency to do it without me teaching you I think my biggest mistake I made in hiring was thinking that I can just teach anyone to do what I do because I think in my head I think it's so easy if I can do it anyone can do it but it's not the case some people just can't do it so I think now I'm looking for the basic competency of whatever the tasks that I want them to do like having some sort of track record and then I also look for this with all my staff just nice people like people you get along with like even I get compliments on like some of my staff being like, oh, they're so nice.