Kebab Joint

07/08/2022

The last and final day tonight, peeps!

04/08/2022

With great sadness I say, I will be closing Kebab Joint in Newport for good. 😔

Our last operational day will be the 7th of August (end of this week.)

I don’t want to be too negative, and the reasons why we had to close. Further details will follow soon. However, ultimately I could float the business ever so much with the rising costs, bills, low trades, lack of staffing….

You can morally increase the prices ever so many times… until you have to say, This is not right!

The War, Covid and Brexit really took it out on small businesses. We had faced unprecedented battering since December 2021. Due to aforementioned reasons; even the deepest pocket would have depleted, what kept me going was the passion for handcrafted (Kebab) food, and duty to customers!

In those 3 years, all is not lost, considering I left a career as a newly qualified Marketing Lecturer, what I learnt in that passage of time is beyond a Degree and books! I encourage others to pursue entrepreneurship. Success isn't measured by failure, rather the lessons and end result.
And to that end, even though our doors here in Newport will be closed after the 7th, I remain hopeful and ambitious to continue with the Kebab Joint Brand we had crafted together. After a short family break, I will be scouting for Kebab Joint 2 in Cardiff. We have an agreement in place to launch the first of the franchises in Cardiff, which is exciting; and this is the end goal I had aspired to.

We wouldn’t have been able to achieve any of it without you guys. And I say this not out of veneration or duty nor exaggeration -sincerely, you guys are the single biggest reasons why we were able to create this blueprint. You told us when you didn't like the chicken Shawarma cut too thin. You told us when you wanted more flavour without overpowering the meat. You told us when the wings were "probably the best ever". You told us when the Beef Doner was too dry, and you also told us when it was too fatty. You told us the sauces were too runny so we made them viscous – which costed us more, we always listened… as we recognised we were creating something for you guys to enjoy! This is the profit of all profits!

A team work it is: a good business can never run on amazing customers alone without dedicated staff, our staff across the board and years have been absolutely amazing! Couldn’t fault them. They were truly the backbone of the success. In those 3 years we had genuinely inspired local and distant catering businesses to re-evaluate how businesses are approached and run. We inspired them to think about Green Planet and Customer relations along with quality over profit.

I look forward to serving you all until the 7th of August 2022. Thank you all for your support!

Kebab Joint “Handcrafted Kebabs."

29/06/2022

We weren't going to take this too seriously as we had hoped she will remove her negative review. But instead she double downed on her defamatory comment and intention. We have reported her to JustEat, her employer, who admitted it has defamatory, and from one of their own drivers. Unfortunately, they may not do much about it. I will personally reach out to all other restaurants she had left negative reviews for, perhaps collectively we can put our foot down on this. I accept KebabJoint will have to take a lead on it.

At the best of times, running any business is challenging, let alone running and build a business that is new, experimental at best... Especially when we are ALL in such economic down turn, people like the drivers depends on us, she decided to kick us as hard as she can, and where it hurts! We try with utmost best to uphold our standards, we are human beings after all, we can try to be 100% everytime and we accept we may slip to 98% on occasions. What business is able to uphold a higher standard than us, this is not an ego statement, but an honest question, in the city we hold the highest level of reviews for experimental food/products, a challenge very few succeed. We've been here nearly 3years now. And we have gone through hell and back with covid19, and now the war... Unprecedented time for businesses as a whole, but we fight on...

The issues with JustEat is that, they only give us 25mins maximum to cook the food before we can hand them over to their drivers. Cooking chicken shish for safe consumption takes around 20mins anyhow. Drivers are assigned 10 to 15 minutes early. So sometimes they have to wait, not our fault. As in if we have 25mins to cook, they'll arrive by 15mins pass, and of course the meat is still being cooked we cannot just hurry it up for the sake of drivers (so that they can go to their next collection and make more money, the longer they wait the more money they lose apparently [even though they get paid for waiting], of course such drivers are not happy with getting paid approximately around £6-9 per delivery, some of them kick a huge fuss at times. They are not happy with making more than our Doctors or head teachers' equivalent of wage, all while tax free! No training, no sacrifice, no hardwork, yet they have the audacity to kick us hard!

We are here to please customers and not drivers! We made that clear. And so we knew we may get bad reviews left by disgruntled drivers, and it happened!
Other times, we refuse to get food bagged up, leave it on the shelf waiting for drivers to collect because (we are still within our time given by JustEat) but more so to ensure we are able to provide customers as fresh and as hot meal as possible. That is why we look to assemble each meal as soon as the driver is 3mins away from the shop so that the customers will receive hot and fresh kebabs, obviously drivers don't understand that! They are always like why don't you get it ready for us bagged up?!

This driver (a bully) left us a defamatory review, we'll see what we do with it. We have reported her to justeat and we shall see... In the meantime, perhaps, we can show her the power of customers... Please help us make her famous, as in get her face known and recognised everywhere across the Newport city. She is very active on justeat and UberEats drivers platform, so you are likely to have her deliver your meal(s).... If you could return the same favour to her so that she knows what it feels like to receive unfounded negative reviews.... Such negative reviews will effect her potential for earning.

Share the life out of this post please! Thank you!

10/06/2022

*We have a driver for tonight from 5:30pm till 10:30pm.
*A driver tomorrow from 5pm till 9pm.
*On Sunday our driver will be available from 5:30pm till 10:30pm.

*Next week, we are off Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, open as normal from Friday to Sunday.

01/06/2022

Apology, we are closed tonight.

24/05/2022

We are always in touch with our local meat supplier, and they are always saying the price is still high. It has been like this since March. Between November 2021 and now, the prices of chicken is double. *But we are not putting the prices up*. I just checked, our handmade kebabs/shawarmas are still cheaper than most if not all the kebab shops locally, and their chicken doner is made at a factory somewhere.
This article is an interesting read to see why the chicken prices have doubled lately.

We follow a chicken from farm to supermarket shelf to see how costs are building up at every stage.

16/05/2022

Probably the most succulent grilled chicken burger you'll ever have and only £4.50!!! Marinated for 24hrs before cooking. Then grilled from raw meat (not precooked like most peri, peri places) nor do we brush a topcoat sauce to mask the dryness and lack of flavour, the flavour of the chicken solely comes from the marinade.

Those of you reading, I just want to say Thank you!!! 😊

09/05/2022

Handmade Peri Peri Chicken Shawarma and Handmade Beef doner

06/05/2022

We the from scratch in our kitchen (THE ONLY PLACE IN WALES TO DO SO.) Expect meaty taste, as if you are eating a slice of roast beef.

26/04/2022

Just a quick message. This order was placed on Sunday night. As you can see the customer just ordered 2 handmade breads. Clearly it is an error. We called justeat to get it cancelled, apparently they are not allowed to cancel orders anymore on our request. We have no facility to cancel the order either. We called the customer numerous times, no reply. We left voice mail and written hand note explaining the error and for them to speak with justeat so that we can arrange a refund for them. They've paid £6.49 for 2 breads! Now, we literally couldn't have done more... the driver came to pick up the item and we gave them 2 breads, and 2 cans (goodwill gesture). We could have got refund for them, if they followed our instructions. Instead they left us a negative review which is so extremely frustrating and annoying! We work tirelessly to uphold our quality and customer satisfactions, we go above and beyond and then someone does this! 1 Negative review has a huge, huge impact on our justeat ratings! If we deserved a negative review then we will take it on board, but when it is literally no fault of our own it's hard to digest. Please review (no pun intended) your order before placing! Thank you!