Ahamed Shahabath N was in school when he tasted a shawarma for the first time. “It was at a place in Karumbukkadai, I don’t remember what it was called,” recalls the 30-year-old. “It cost ₹50 a piece and a friend and I pooled in ₹25 each and shared it.” Today, Ahamed, along with friends and now business partners Yasar Arafath M, and Jansa Mohammed K, runs his own chain of mobile shawarma trucks and outlets in Coimbatore. The three friends, all engineers, started Street Arabiya as an experiment in 2018.
“We started by selling from a truck in Podanur,” says Ahamed, seated on the roof-top of their new outlet, which stands in the same locality. Their shawarmas were an instant hit. “We were among the first to sell shawarmas in a food truck. Also, we offered five different flavours,“ he adds. The following year, they set up another truck at Ramanathapuram. This particular truck is ever crowded, and is one of their most popular ones. Today, Street Arabiya has two outlets and six trucks in the city, apart from branches in Tiruchy, Kangeyam, Chennai, and Palakkad.
