14:22
and I work for a company called King Fry Meat Products Limited. We're a beef burger manufacturer. Uh we sell them frozen, wholesale only throughout the UK and Europe. The company owner uh Andreas Sergio, he was u from the fish and chips trade, which is where he met his wife. So they've been in part of the food industry since they moved over to England. They were from Cyprus originally. He created um his own branch in at the in his own garage making savoys and sausages because it was his Muslim friend contacts he diverted directly into halal. So we don't do anything else but 100% halal beef burgers. My name is uh Shamshad Hussein and I work for a company called King Fry Meat Products Limited based in Birmingham in
the center of the West Midlands. We're a beef burger manufacturer. Uh we sell them frozen, wholesale only throughout the UK and Europe. the company owner uh Andreas Sergio he was u from the fish and chips trade which is where he met his wife so they've been in part of the food industry since they moved over to England they were from Cyprus originally um they so they've been gone through the fish and chip shop selling to all the various other things he created um his own branch in at the in in his own garage making savloys and sausages is and they went from there. It eventually got to a point where it was getting a bit too big for his garage. So he moved to the premises that we're at the moment where in 1985 King Fry were
incorporated. Um and then from there we went strength from strength to strength. He his biggest claim to fame is that he invented the first donor kebab making machine. Nobody else will believe him, but he's very proud of that fact. So it we're making donor kebabs. Um we're making sausages. halal because of his Muslim friend contacts he diverted directly into halal. So we don't do anything else but 100% halal beef burgers. We bypass the donor kebabs because it was uh it was a bit too much. So we thought we might he thought we might as well concentrate on what I'm good at and be a master at it. And that's why we went into the beef burgers and we are
nationally known. We you the only competition we have for it is Paragon in our capacity but invent printing loads of machinery and investing lot of money um we can turn over like 10,000 burgers a week. So and we transport across the country and abroad to Spain and all the other European countries. Now he's criate is from Cyprus. He's grown up and born and bred in Cyprus. Um his father was a preacher. So he's got religious background and in and even now he preaches at the local church in Coventry where which is a Greek cpriate church. So he um he preaches there. He does sermons and whatever.
He's grown up with Muslims as you know about Cyprus. I don't know how much background on Cypus. You know how the Greeks and the Turks have fought over it. And so he's got Muslim friends and everything. His father was a preacher. um but also a furniture maker. His mom was and they had their own land so they grew food and everything. He's got an engineering degree from Cyprus. He came to England to like the almost all of us to improve ourselves and you know get better prospects. He studied at uh Birmingham um got an engineering degree in Aston part-time supported himself by selling pies, buying pies, selling them. He's always been into business and he's an engineer by academic standards. He's an engineer. So he's always loves inventing, looking at things, trying to
do uh things in a different way. His wife's family was in the fish and chip shop trade anyway when he met her. So it was like a nice gentle avenue for him to go into and both of them have got the food background making that side. And back in the 1970s when he first came being that old myself, um I know what it was like. Well, you have your own Muslim communities, you have your own separate communities, your own Greek communities. So with that side, uh he's that's how he's expanded. He has with all the contests he's got and the one of the main person that was behind him pushing him to set up King Fry was a gentleman called Aziz who's a Muslim and who's got his own cash and carry business and
everything and working with him. That's where King Fry came into being. Totally go 100% halal. He entered the market at the right time when I can remember back in the 70s there wasn't that many shops for Muslims. Uh living in Warsaw, you only had the one corner shop and that was it. And over the years I've seen how much it's expanded, how much the Muslim market has grown. It's grown massively. And he entered it at just at the right time. And he's got himself a very good foothold, very good standing, very good reputation. And we sell right across the UK. Right
We have our own um quality management system, a quality manager who makes sure that any supplier that we deal with can supplies with the halal certificates and they're verified halal certificates. So we know the HMBB board, we know the HMC board. We moved away from HMC because it became too strict. Um I know Andreas was telling me uh about 1015 years ago before I came to the company they were very strict and they were restricting the business. So he moved away but the principles are still there. He understood the principles of halal how the logo needs to go on there how the meat needs to be produced and frozen and where to source it from.
Um and we still carry that on now. Stiff unless a stiff good is produced by our supplier we don't trade with them. We went for it because we were getting emails on our um on our website, not on our emails. And uh Andrew was very curious to see what was going on because how we managed to get Islam channel emailing us, I have no idea, but we were getting load of them. And when this business award one came up, he goes, "Shan, we've got to do something." That's my that's is my Greek accent. He goes, "We have to do something." I said, "What? What do you mean?" I said, "You're not Muslims." I said, "How am I going to get you through this?" I said, "You got me and most 90% of our
staff are Muslims and they work in the factory and in the production line, but in the office staff, you got your family, your son-in-laws are all Greek. So, how are we going to convince them that we do halal stuff?" And he goes, "But Sham, you have we've got to try because our product is halal. Our market is halal. Just because we are not Muslims, that doesn't mean that we don't share the same values, the same principles, the same ethos and it's it's striving to do something good at, you know, excellently rather than just a bishmat and pretending that you are halal. No. And Andreas is very much in because if he's a religious background through his father, he's very much into
principle and if he has a principle in mind, he will stick to it and he will not deviate. And if that person is telling him that it's it's halal and he knows it's not that door is shut on you and that I have great deal of loyalty for him and with him. I've been working there for 15 years now. I only went there to do 6 months and I'm still trying to finish those six months because I'm still there now. So the Isan character we didn't know because we thought we'll go for the small business enterprise. Um, and then I had a call from Hummar asking if any of the directors were Muslims. And I went, unfortunately not. No, they're all Christians. And she said, "Oh, well, in that case, what we think of the better
category is it Isan?" And I went, "Okay." Um, and she got me on a bad day that day because I had so many other things to do. And then we sat and tal thought about it and I spoke to Andreas and I said, "Look, Andreas, we can't be the small business because you can't prove that you're you're Christians unless you do a certain thing." Um, so we're going to go for the Islam. So we and he goes, "Okay, that's fine." So he goes, "What does it mean?" And I went, "Your Arabic, my Arabic is probably as good as yours, which isn't very good." So we had to look it up and we looked it up and we thought that's exactly what I associate with Andreas. Andreas and Nina. Nina is more retired now. She doesn't get
that much involved because she's got really bad arthritis, so she can't make it to the business. But with Andrew, it was, you know, striving for excellence, doing what you do to your best ability. Don't do it 50% or 80% or 90%, go for the 100%. And when you do that, it shows in your work. It shows in um in Andrew's work and in the way he runs the company, the way people treat him. Um the kind of respect he has amongst the Muslims that come to the company is incredible. Absolutely incredible. Um his milestones were he worked leaving Cyprus to come to England. That is a big thing for everyone. I've done it. I was born and bred in Pakistan but I came to England. Same thing with Andreas 18
19 year old come to England. um taught himself uh English, went to uni, got himself an engineering degree. So you got that side of it and then creating slowly building up his own business. 1985 King Fry was incorporated. So he's that was his big milestone. The company was incorporated. He was trading as all of the various little things in between. But 1985 is when King Fry came into being. Um he was telling me also in 1999 when we had foot and mouth it almost destroyed his business because it's all food. Foot and mouth decimated the food industry because it was a disease that affected the cows and where do we get beef from? Cows. So they were slaughtering cows by the hundreds and it almost decimated his business but it plotted on change direction
and he's always like that changes direction to accommodate that mishap or that tragedy or whatever disaster that's happened keep steering his way around. Um building up the business to where it is. It's it we've got a magnificent standing with our suppliers and our customers. Um last year we he eventually got his dream which was to build a purpose-built cold store. While he was while we're at the site he uh we were just using great massive containers. You know the freezer containers that you get on the lries. We had four of them and they were gas guzzers and absolutely inefficient. So two years ago or was it two or three or was it go I can't remember. Two years
ago we eventually got a coal store built purpose-built coal store. So that was beautiful. It can hold it's it's a large one. I know I got lost in it and I said I ain't going in there again. Um so it can hold all of that. And next was and then we it looks at other things. We've got solar panels. We just invested 180 odd and applied also for a grant from Birmingham. We got solar pans put in. Um, I know during the books that our electricity bills are around £10,000, £8,000 to £10,000 a month. And with these solar panels, touchwood, that's going to bring our bills down. Not only that, help with the environment as well.
Um, so he's always looking at these and we're looking at different packaging um suppliers that we have, finding the best packaging supplier. So, we're trying to reduce the packaging on that side. Um, and any waste that's coming out, we we're always working on things like that. His next uh his ambition is to get a spiral freezer. I hope that's right, Andrew. Is to get a spiral freezer which will freeze these burgers like that. At the moment, we're packing them and putting them in a big cold store and big free blast freezer, but the spiral freezers whether you've seen any, you know, if you watch the um inside the factory those programs, he loves those. there you can freeze that product
immediately as it comes out goes through a system and it just freezes and gets packed. So that was that is one of his next ambitions trying to put one of those in. At the moment our biggest drawback is we've had a fire. We had an arsson attack two years ago in March 23. Um thankfully it didn't hit the factory side. It was mainly the offices that got burnt out. Uh we moved into the our unit next door. Um we're trying to restore everything. um and rebuild it. So there they were like little small milestones and hitting five million uh just under five million last year's accounts was our biggest milestone because we were hovering around the two the one the two one two and we hit 4
million in last year's accounts and this year we're hoping to hit five. It would it um they only told the lads today yesterday that this is what we're going for and then they're all going oh my god sh you never said I said that's why we kept it quiet cuz we know that you won't concentrate on the job in hand so we kept it quiet um it would be absolutely brilliant to win it. Um King Fry have never done any marketing never done any branding or come out of the come out into the limelight to show themselves off or anything like that. um because of word of mouth and his reputation is where and Andreas has got to where he is now. And now we're just looking at well let's do some marketing.
Let's do a bit of that because it was such a family run business. It was just Andreas and Nina. They didn't have time to put marketing or anything or computers or whatever. Um and now they can because you got people in there like myself who've got outside experience. um that we can bring in a lot more to the company and to basically take King Fry forward um and put it on Islam channel. I think that would be absolutely superb. It would be it actually if you look at our logo, it's a crown. So that would crown it all.
