Mohammad Shaikh is co-founder and CEO of Eatphoria, the London-based multi-brand quick-service restaurant group behind the halal chicken brand Wraps & Wings, which he runs with his brother Arshad.
In January 2026 the group announced a multi-million-pound investment from TAN Food, part of Italian venture capital firm TAN Holding, and it now plans to open at least 20 hybrid Wraps & Wings restaurants over the next two years. The push follows like-for-like sales growth of more than 16 per cent at Wraps & Wings, a refreshed menu and a new store design unveiled this summer.
He tells Business Matters why food is a people business, what his father taught him and why he would rather fail fast than wait for the perfect moment.
What do you currently do at Eatphoria?
As CEO and co-founder of Eatphoria, the multi-brand quick-service restaurant group behind Wraps & Wings, I am involved in everything from setting the strategic direction of the business and working with our leadership team to spending time with our franchise partners, understanding how we can support their growth.
I am also heavily involved in the areas that have always interested me most, such as menu engineering, business modelling and product innovation. Food remains a real passion of mine, and I regularly travel across Europe to meet suppliers, discover new products and explore ideas that we can bring into the business. Alongside this, I work closely with our investors and board as we execute our growth strategy.
What I enjoy most is combining the strategic side of growing a business with the food, people and partnerships that attracted me to hospitality in the first place.
What was the inspiration behind your business?
Food and hospitality have always been part of my life.
My father built a very successful restaurant business in Mumbai that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. I grew up around restaurants, although interestingly, I initially studied engineering and expected to pursue a completely different career before eventually joining the family business.
Once I did, my perspective changed completely. I realised there is something very special about food. You can sell someone a product they use for a few years and eventually replace or forget about. Food is different.
People return to the same restaurant for 10, 20, even 30 years because of how it makes them feel. They bring their children, celebrate milestones and build memories around particular dishes.
That is why I have always believed hospitality is ultimately a people business. I saw that first-hand growing up. People who worked with my father when I was young became part of our story, and in some cases their children later came to work with us too.
That sense of family, community and belonging has stayed with me. It is something my brother Arshad and I have always wanted to carry forward as we have built Eatphoria, creating memorable experiences for customers and opportunities for the people who help us grow.
Who do you admire?
My father. He was, and always will be, my hero.
He taught me a great deal about business, but what I admired most was how he treated people. Our home was only around a ten-minute walk from the restaurant, but whenever I walked there with him, we would constantly be stopped by people who knew him. In the restaurant, he did not interact with guests simply as customers; he spoke to them like old friends.
But his impact went far beyond the restaurant. He was incredibly connected to his community and believed strongly in helping people, whether that meant finding someone a job, making an introduction or supporting them in starting a business.
I understood the scale of that impact even more when he passed away. People came to pay their respects and shared stories I had never heard about how he had helped them.
He taught me that success is not just about what you build for yourself, but what you enable other people to build. That is something I try to carry forward in my own business, although I know I still have a lot to live up to.
Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
I probably should have listened to my father and gone to catering college instead of studying engineering.
Growing up, engineering genuinely fascinated me. I was the child building electronic circuits, experimenting with light switches and trying to create temperature controls around the house.
I do not regret that path, though. Engineering taught me how to think analytically, solve problems and approach challenges systematically. Those skills have been incredibly valuable in business.
If I could change something, I would probably have started my hospitality career earlier. I also wish I had recognised sooner how important it is to surround yourself with exceptional people.
One of my biggest priorities in 2025 was strengthening Eatphoria’s leadership team and bringing more specialist expertise into the business. I wish I had done that earlier.
When you are building a business, it is easy to believe you need to have the answer to everything. But leadership is not about being the expert in every area. It is about recognising where expertise is needed and bringing great people around you who can challenge you and make the business stronger.
What defines your way of doing business?
Integrity, strong values and long-term relationships.
Eatphoria has grown with a very family-driven mentality, and that is something I am determined to retain as we become a bigger business.
Some of our earliest franchise partners were people who knew me personally, believed in what we were trying to achieve and chose to join us when the business was still very much a vision. That kind of trust creates a real responsibility, and it is something I have never taken lightly.
For me, the strongest business relationships are built on mutual respect and a shared ambition to succeed. That is particularly important in franchising, where our success is closely connected to the success of our partners.
Ultimately, I want to create a business where our colleagues, franchise partners and suppliers feel genuinely part of what we are building and can share in its success. Growth is important, but how you grow matters just as much.
What advice would you give to someone starting out?
Start early, execute your ideas and do not be afraid of failure. People can spend far too much time thinking about an idea, trying to perfect it and waiting for the right moment. But there is rarely a perfect moment. At some point, you have to take the first step, because execution is where you actually start learning.
You also have to be comfortable with the fact that not everything will work. In hospitality, consumer expectations are constantly evolving, and what works today might not work tomorrow. You need to be willing to experiment, recognise when something is not working and adapt quickly.
That is how we have approached building Eatphoria over the years. Our business today looks quite different from the one we started more than a decade ago, and that evolution has come from constantly looking for ways to improve.
I would always rather try something, fail fast and come away smarter than spend years wondering whether an idea might have worked.
