2021 – 2026
A smashed burger joint I started with my brother in the back of a flower shop. It became London's highest rated on Google.
What I say about it now, and what I was actually posting at the time.
We did not plan any of this. The pandemic shut my dad's restaurant, my parents were stranded in Bangladesh, and me and my brother had a kitchen and nothing to cook in it.
I didn’t plan to build Simply Smashed – we built it to survive. In early 2020, just as the lockdown was being announced, my parents boarded a flight back to Bangladesh, leaving my brother, Sifat Ahmed, and me to manage our family’s Italian restaurant in East London. What was meant to be a routine…
We sold burgers from the back of a flower shop. And it saved our restaurant. Our full-service Italian restaurant was dying after COVID hit. My brother had what seemed like the worst idea ever: "Let's share space with a flower shop and focus on delivery only." I thought he'd lost his mind. Our…
A £100 grill, a borrowed projector, my mum's recipes.
Three years ago, we borrowed a projector. This summer, we packed out a living room. When we opened Simply Smashed three years ago, it was during the Euros final. At the time, we were a dark kitchen, but we started getting requests to show the game. So, I borrowed a projector from a friend, put…
The part nobody claps for is the part I am proudest of. Fifty minutes down to eight.
We went from 50-minute order times to 8 minutes. This simple screen represents everything we've been through to get here. Two years ago, I was crawling behind fridges looking for lost receipts. We were taking orders on notepads in the back of a flower shop. Scribbling down orders, crumpling…
8am on a bank holiday Monday. Me, a coffee, and 50 ethernet cables I had no idea how to install. Welcome to SS 2.0. I'm installing structured cabling for our new kiosk systems at Simply Smashed. First time in my life doing anything like this. "What's a patch panel?" I asked ChatGPT at…
We kept making decisions that looked commercially stupid. Closing the first week of Ramadan at 30% of monthly revenue. Building a prayer space instead of more covers. Every one paid us back.
Why we're closing our restaurant for the first week of Ramadan... And why it'll cost us 30% of our monthly revenue: Most restaurants are rushing to capitalize on Iftar sales right now. We're doing the opposite. At Simply Smashed, we've made it a tradition to close during Ramadan's first…
The UK has a prayer space problem—and we've all felt it. Many restaurants market iftar deals for Ramadan, but forget the most important part—a place to pray. Picture this: You're out for iftar. The restaurant's packed with Muslims breaking their fast. Maghrib time comes... but there's nowhere to…
We ban men from eating at our restaurant. Well, on Sisters’ Nights, at least. At Simply Smashed, our Sisters’ Nights are one-of-a-kind: exclusive evenings where only women are allowed to eat in-store. These nights are about more than just food. They create a safe, welcoming space for women to…
Then a landlord told us we had to sell beer. We said no and walked away from the site.
The landlord had one requirement: sell beer. We said no and left. A while back, I was standing inside this perfect empty pub thinking about everything we could build there. 18 months it had been sitting vacant. Dust on the windows, chairs stacked on tables, that sad emptiness of a place where…
We were vocal about Palestine and got review bombed for it. We doubled down.
We got review bombed for supporting Palestine, so we doubled down - now we're UK's #1 rated burger joint. I remember when we first started getting review-bombed. One-star reviews started trickling in. No comments, just stars. Then we saw the pattern: People targeting us because we chose to stock…
"You're the Palestinian burger guy, right?" 8 hours of interrogation. That's how I knew we were onto something. Three weeks ago, Ibrahim Javed and I tried to cross into the West Bank. Routine questions became an 8-hour detention. Separated rooms. Aggressive searches. They'd found our Simply…
Two brothers recited the entire Qur'an from memory in nine hours, two seconds apart.
These teenage brothers just recited the entire Quran from memory in 9 hours - finishing just 2 seconds apart. Here's why their story matters to our entire community: At dawn, Abdurrahman (15) and Saabiq (16) began their extraordinary challenge. Hour after hour, verse after verse, they raced…
This weekend, I’ve been building something I’ve dreamed about for years. Young Muslims face so much emotionally, especially during their teenage years. Some of us were lucky to have an "Ameen" in our lives. That person in the prayer room who gave the right advice at the right time. But many…
Somewhere in the middle of all this my face became a Ramadan meme, globally, without my permission. Fair enough.
Yes. I am the face of that meme you see every Ramadan... The story of how my face became a global Muslim internet phenomenon: I'm that guy from the "When you're fasting but..." meme. You know, the one that resurfaces every single Ramadan across multiple countries. One of the wildest moments?…
A customer reported a missing item, so I hired a Boris bike and cycled it to his door myself in five minutes. He took the bag without a word and shut the door. The game is the game.
I once hired a Boris bike to deliver a missing chicken burger to a customer's front door. He grabbed the bag, and shut the door without a word. We were mid-rush at Simply Smashed, maybe a Friday night, orders stacking up on the UberEats tablet. I checked a bag going out and realised we'd missed an…
I left in January 2026. My brother runs it now, and runs it better.
I've left Simply Smashed. After 2 years of building the highest rated burger joint in London, I'm stepping back. My brother's taking over day-to-day. I'm building something new. It's strange to write that. This was never supposed to be my thing. My dad has been in the food industry for over 35…
I keep entering domains the slow way in the fastest era in history. Twice now and I'd do it again. You can go to Claude right now and start building in a domain you have zero expertise in. And it might work tbh, in fact, we're in the most competitive era of software in history because of…
England crashed out of the World Cup semis yesterday and somehow I was the happiest person in the room. You know that scene in Avengers where Red Skull says "I guide others to a treasure I cannot possess," that's basically been my experience owning a restaurant for two years. We built Simply…
I was building an AI company between burger orders and honestly I miss it. I keep looking at this photo and it's kinda crazy. Simply Smashed was on its second location. Peruvian Street Kitchen was on its first. And somewhere in between both of those I decided this was also where I'd start…
Side project of the week: I built an AI that composes music and then removes the music from itself. vibenasheeds: the claude for making vocal nasheed beats. Some of you might remember the lofi Muslim YouTube channel I posted about last year. I was making nasheed beats after 12-hour shifts at…
I built the highest rated burger joint in London. Last month I walked into one that made me take notes. I had a stopover in Sweden, hadn't slept, needed a meal. Searched for halal options and this place popped up. Highest rated burger joint in Gothenburg. Smash burgers. I couldn't not go. The…
Content is product. Product is content. I've said it maybe 200 times now. Most founders nod and then go do the opposite anyway. We ran Simply Smashed with zero paid marketing. Literally zero. We were just documenting the messiness of building a burger joint from the back of a flower shop and…