Aagrah has the sauce to double turnover

Aagrah Tarka cooking sauces were launched last year on to the shelves of 45 Tesco stores and from next week the sauces will also be available in more than 150 Asda stores throughout Yorkshire and the North East.

Managing director of the chain of Yorkshire restaurants, Mohammed Aslam MBE hopes that the introduction of the sauces will double the turnover of his business from its current £15m to £30m within five to six years.

“We have four flavours of sauces and have created a range of chutneys and two pickles.

“There will be more sauces in September,” said Mr Aslam, whose restaurants employ around 400 people.

He is also hopeful that Morrisons will soon stock the sauces as well.

It is 35 years since the The Aagrah opened its first restaurant in Shipley.

It was established by Mohammed’s brother Mohammed Sabir MBE, when both brothers were working as bus drivers.

Mr Sabir operated a takeaway known as the Spice Pot from the back of a Ford Commer in 1976 before he opened the first restaurant in Westgate, Shipley.

He sold the Spice Pot for a profit of £300 a year later and with a loan of £20,000 from a bank manager he had become friends with through the Spice Pot, transformed a former plumbers and bakery into a 40-seater restaurant.

It wasn’t long before Mr Aslam was on board, followed by his other brother Zaffar Iqbal, and later by his nephew Arshad Mahmood.

“I am a brand builder,” said Mr Aslam. “It doesn’t bother me when I am spending money on building the brand – you have to look after next week, not just today.

“But investment in people is more important – time and money on training is important – most of our chefs are local lads who have worked their way up.”

He is proud that all 40 of his chefs have been trained by him and that most of them began life at the Aagrah as dishwashers.

“In 35 years, we have never been short of chefs,” he said.

He says that there are only two chefs who have come from abroad including a chef who was the executive chef from the Hilton in Sri Lanka and that there are all kinds of influences on the cuisine offered in the restaurants.

“We have experts within the group from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, all over India.

“We have a Kashmir and Punjabi mix which influence each other,” he added.

He and his brother had to work hard to learn the skills they needed to build such a successful business.

“When I started I literally didn’t know how to boil an egg, but after I left my job as a bus driver in Bradford I moved to London and started cooking.

“I found I really enjoyed it. In our restaurants all the cooking was learnt at home from my wife, my sister-in-law and Iqbal’s wife,” he said.

He said it was a gradual process to build up the business from the first restaurant in Shipley.

“The second one was the hardest,” he said. “That came in 1986.”

But then there was no looking back as they opened one restaurant after another in Skipton, Pudsey, Leeds, Sheffield, Garforth, Tadcaster, Doncaster, Denby Dale, Chapel Allerton, Wakefield and others in Yorkshire.

The latest addition to the collection of restaurants recently opened in Bristol.

Mr Aslam said the biggest challenge was completing The Midpoint Suite in Pudsey, which was a £4m project and began with an empty 1.6-acre site in 2009.

“It was my dream,” said Mr Aslam.

“It was part of the brand building as I felt the group needed something of that level – a flagship restaurant.”

In recent years, the Midpoint has become a major venue for corporate events.

He has since opened another three and continues to refurbish – even if that means working on four restaurants at a time as he did during the year he oversaw the building of the Midpoint.

“It was a tough time,” he said. “That is when I lost most of my hair!”

Now the next generation are already working in the restaurants with his two sons Naeem and Wasim Aslam and his nephew Arshad Mahmood.

“They are already running it,” said Mr Aslam.