How Sohail Ali helped Chaiiwala go from Delhi to drive-thru

When Sohail Ali co-founded Chaiiwala in 2015, the pitch was straightforward: bring authentic chai and Indian street food to the British high street. No watered-down flavours and no corners cut in favour of speed. Just the kind of food – and the kind of chai – you’d find on the streets of Delhi.

More than a decade on, it’s paying off. Global sales jumped 35% to £89.4m in 2024, customers are visiting up to four times a week and Ali is now eyeing the US market, with the former global CEO of KFC advising on the move. The brand that started with a spiced milk tea now looks like it could be a major player in QSR.

“If you want to get into Indian street food and want the proper stuff, you’re going to come to us,” he says.

The company was inspired by the family’s history selling chai in New Delhi. Chaiwalas appeared in India in the late 19th century with individuals setting up small stalls or pushing carts from which they brewed and served cups of spiced tea. The name comes from the Hindi words ‘chai’, meaning tea, and ‘wala’, a seller. Ali and his two co-founders – his cousins Muhummed Ibrahim and Mustafa Ismail – share a great-grandfather who ran such a stall in the 1920s.

Despite having little background in the industry (Ibrahim was a builder and Ismail a pharmacist), the three cousins spotted an opportunity in the booming popularity of the chai latte – a coffee shop adaptation of a traditional chai that replaces most of the water with heavily steamed milk. “A chai latte is an easy version of a chai,” says Ali. “It’s like if I was making pasta, an Italian nonna would chuckle at my pasta – that’s how I feel about chai lattes. When we realised there was a huge market for chai lattes, we thought, consumers are going to love this.”

Making chai the traditional way is a “very long process”, explains Ali. Water is infused with tea leaves and spices including cardamom, cloves, ginger and cinnamon for at least 30 minutes before milk and sugar are added. It can “take hours to brew a proper cuppa”.

“At Chaiiwala, we wanted to have a place based around chai, but where you can grab and go within minutes,” he adds. But chai is only part of the offering. The menu spans Indian food on the go – Butter Chicken Roll, Aloo Tikki Burger, Chicken Tikka Melt – alongside a full ‘English-ish breakfast’ that combines masala omelette and masala beans with chicken sausages, hash browns and toast.

The goal is to prove that Indian food can be “quite flavoursome without being spicy” and eaten at any time of day. “[People] generally expect Indian food to be had on the weekend, late at night, and to be strong and smelly – in a positive way. But our identity is based around being British and Indian at the same time and how we can bring Indian street food to the masses in all dayparts,” Ali explains.

Revenue is now split 50/50 between food and drink, with the drinks range extending well beyond chai into matcha, mocktails and limited-edition trend-led launches. Social media has been central to such agility. Ali, who was just 22 when the business launched, says: “We’re in a genre where we can put an Indian twist on pretty much anything. We’ve had so many different fusion ideas. When Dubai chocolate went crazy, we were able to jump on that, infuse it into products, our cakes, our ice cream.”

Humble beginnings

Chaiiwala started in Leicester in a converted store on the Evington Road. It now operates more than 120 stores across the UK, Canada and the UAE – with format innovation key to its growth. “We’re in so many different types of location. We’ve got airports, high streets, retail parks, and we’re looking at doing a hospital very soon; catering for all types of customers is super important.”

In May, Chaiiwala launched its first 24-hour drive-thru, in Blackburn, with Ali describing early trading as “amazing – we’ve not had a zero hour yet.”

It follows a similarly strong debut for the brand’s first airport location in June 2024. In its first month, it achieved the highest grossing sales per sq ft of any F&B offering at London Luton Airport.

Ali is targeting 400 more UK locations over the next decade, as well as expanding further afield. That includes the US, where the brand has been exploring the east coast and Texas as potential launch points. Research by strategy consultants OC&C suggests an opportunity to open 800 locations in the US long term. Sabir Sami, the former global CEO of KFC – who came to the brand as a fan – is advising on the expansion.

“We’ve been studying the US for a while and had meetings with a few big partners interested in the business,” says Ali. There’s consumer interest, too, with Ali saying Americans have been “emailing and calling” about a restaurant across the pond. His dream location would be the Las Vegas strip.

“We want to make sure we get it right, whether that’s the flavour profiles or the state we’re in. But we’ve done a lot of hard work over the years, and we do plan on launching very soon.”

Part of getting the proposition right means tailoring the offer to the location. He cites the example of McDonald’s, which varies its offering by country.

“In Dubai, [McDonald’s has] got the McArabia, in India they do the McAloo Tikka, in Singapore they do rice and noodles, but in all these places you can get the Big Mac,” says Ali. “Our core products are always there, but sometimes we do jazz it up a little. In Canada, they’re crazy about poutine, so we did a butter chicken poutine. In Dubai, they love table service, so we sometimes incorporate a bit of that.”

For all its global ambition, Ali says Chaiiwala will not forget its roots and will maintain its community feel. “Some brands forget about the human connection. We’re planning book clubs and run clubs where you can meet people from your community,” he says.

With success comes the risk that others might look to replicate its offering, but Ali is not afraid of competition.

“We’re going more mainstream. Where we’re headed now, it would be very hard for a competing brand to get to our level, purely because of the volume we’re selling, and we’re associated with some of the best franchise partners in the country,” he says. “We’re light years ahead in terms of people, network, knowledge and learnings.”