Taj Stores
Taj Stores, a grocery store that is nothing less than an emporium of food, spices and all manner of cooking utensils, is the oldest Bengali-owned business in Brick Lane.
Its owners are three brothers, grandchildren of the founder, who, at one time, also owned a café serving spicy snacks and tea to local South Asians. Like other grocery businesses in the Lane – for example, Zaman Bros – Taj Stores remained open throughout the pandemic. However, although local Bangladeshis on the estates on either side of Brick Lane continued to shop, the wholesale business supplying not only the curry restaurants in Brick Lane but other restaurants and hotels in the greater Shoreditch area has suffered enormously. One of the owners estimated that trade in July 2021 was around 30 per cent of normal. Nevertheless, slow trade throughout the pandemic has meant that the owners have had the time and opportunity to re-evaluate their business strategy. In particular, they are thinking of moving premises to a smaller site nearby and reorienting towards the digital sphere. ‘It’s something we were thinking about before the virus arrived,’ said one of the owners, ‘but we had trouble getting the website up and running. But now we want to revisit that because, like it or not, everything is moving online.’ But like many other businesses on the street, the owners of Taj Stores are looking forward to the return of domestic and international visitors in considerable numbers, especially those not staying in hotels but renting short-term accommodation and, therefore, sometimes cooking food for themselves. ‘We definitely need those tourists to come back to the area – and the sooner, the better.’