Late afternoon on the Friday before Labor Day, two employees and an owner of Nanu’s gathered around an iPad and took turns spinning a virtual wheel to determine winners in the hot chicken joint’s back-to-school giveaway. For each of the three drawn names, there was a $200 cash prize.
For Imran Rashid and his co-owner brothers, it’s a helping hand to the community he said has given a warm greeting to the family-owned business that opened in July on 2210 Cottman Ave., the longtime former home of Nick’s Roast Beef.
“We’ve gotten a really great response from the community, and we appreciate them with all our hearts,” Imran, 34, told Billy Penn. “We don’t feel like we’re new. That’s how they made us feel.”
The confidence is visible in Nanu’s expansion plans: Two additional brick-and-mortar locations and three new carts to open by year’s end, followed by the region’s first all-halal food hall at the Cottman Avenue space.
While an arguably rushed pace for a two-month-old business with no previous brand equity, for Imran and his brothers it’s the result of years of labor and a business approach fueled by a responsibility to family and community.
Landing in Northeast Philly
Imran and his mother and six siblings in 1999 moved from Pakistan to Brooklyn, where his father had settled and found a job as a construction worker. At 18, his older brother Ikram took on jobs at a variety of halal carts to help support the family. A year later, he convinced their father to launch their own.
“We collected whatever we had,” Imran said of the family savings that went into their first chicken-over-rice cart, set up in 2003 on 48th and Park Avenue in Manhattan.
For a while business was steady, enough to launch two more carts and require the recruitment of Imran’s second eldest brother, Haroon, and even Imran himself after school. But a brick-and-mortar location proved a tougher nut to crack. An attempt ultimately floundered after just a few months.
In 2008, the family left New York — “we could barely afford anything there” — and moved to Philadelphia. Ikram sold the businesses in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and in 2010 set up a halal cart on 20th and Market. Another cart soon followed, and then gradually three more, all in University City. Eventually, Imran was drawn in full time despite having recently graduated from Wyoming Technical Institute in Blairsville with a mechanical technician’s degree.
With an eye towards expansion, eldest brother Ikram turned to friend Matt Rossi, the owner of Nick’s Roast Beef, to ask about setting up a pop-up in the sports bar’s expansive Cottman Avenue location, only to find out it was vacating the spot it had occupied for 54 years due to increased rent.
The Rashid brothers purchased the property, conveniently close to where they live, with the plan to turn it into an all-halal food hall. Imran believes it will be the first of its kind in the region.
For brotherly love
With their carts operating consistently and Ikram, Haroon, and Imran all deeply involved in the growing family business, it was their mother’s concern over their youngest brother, 20-year-old Adnan, or Nanu, that prompted a shift in plans.
“My mom was always worried about our younger brother, who has Down Syndrome,” Imran explained. “She was always concerned about his future, so we decided to surprise her.”
The food hall was quietly put on hold in favor of an idea the three brothers felt would bring their mother reassurance. They kept their new endeavor a secret from her and Adnan until it was ready to unveil, taking them to Nanu’s Hot Chicken once it was furnished, branded, and days from launching.
The idea, Imran said, was to make a collective statement from the brothers that “Nanu is number one for us, for all our lives, regardless of what happens.”
More than financial, the gesture is symbolic. As with the rest of the family’s sources of revenue, profits are equally split before ending up mostly in the same place. “We all live in the same house,” Imran pointed out. “So, everything comes into one place and feeds our families from there.”
Proximity to family, Imran believes, has been essential to the success of their businesses. While not nostalgic about earlier, tougher days in Brooklyn that saw nine of them share a single bedroom apartment, he explained that more financial stability hasn’t resulted in a desire by the siblings to move out, just to find a larger roof to keep everyone under, including a new generation of his own kids and their cousins.
“If you stick together, you can build yourself up, you can build your family up, and your community as well,” Imran said. “If you’re alone, you can only do so much.”
Building a brand
The decision to center Nanu’s on hot chicken was made primarily due to its trendiness and relative simplicity. “It’s less hectic,” Imran explained, “than gyros which take up all your time and can drive you crazy.”
Ikram, the most culinary-inclined of the siblings, concocted his own blend of Nashville-inspired recipes. Each of the six levels of heat at Nanu’s consist of their own combination of spices, instead of escalating amounts of the same blend, an approach Imran says most hot chicken spots follow. Everything at Nanu’s, Imran said, “is made from scratch, even our hot honey and dipping sauces.”
It’s all proven more popular than the brothers anticipated. “We’re focused on building a brand,” Imran said of the efforts surrounding their upcoming brick-and-mortar locations: a sit-down store on 44th and Chestnut and a takeout/delivery spot in Brewerytown.
Plans for the all-halal food hall at the Cottman Avenue location are still in the works, he insisted.
There are three other service windows inside the building, currently papered over. Ideas for them include Mexican and Chinese options, Imran said, along with “a surprise. Something exotic you can’t find in an everyday restaurant.”
Like all the family’s business decisions, the lineup was based on options presented by eldest sibling Ikram and voted on by Haroon, Imran, and their father, who serves as tiebreaker when needed.
Until then, it’ll be business as usual at Nanu’s. The brothers are planning more events, including a car meet organized by self-confessed “car freak” Imran and more giveaways along the lines of the back-to-school raffle and previous eating challenges that included prizes like flatscreen TVs and pairs of Nike’s retro Panda dunks.
“The community showed us love, we got to show love back,” said Imran. “It can’t happen one way, it’s got to happen both ways.”
