Rola Wala, the street food deli-wrap concept, is running two London pop-ups ahead of finding a permanent restaurant in London, M&C Report has learnt.
The group has opened at Street Feast’s Model Market in Lewisham and preparing to open a site at Dalston Yard’s Street Feast from May.
Founder Mark Wright said both residencies will last for the six months over the summer: “We started in London and wanted to re-establish ourselves back here as well as having some fun and going back to our roots.”
Wright is eyeing Canary Wharf, Hackney Wick, Shoreditch and Soho for a permanent site, saying he would like to be everywhere and each of those parts of London would provide different benefits and offer something exciting.
Rola Wala started out at street food events in the capital before securing a permanent site in Leeds at Trinity Kitchen – following a successful pop-up residency at the scheme last April.
Having proven the concept works both in food trucks and a much larger permanent space allows Wright to consider a broader range of available sites than competitor operators taking a more traditional approach to finding sites.
“One of the things we found is it’s a very different ball game operating in a fixed environment as opposed to the street but we had wanted it for a while.”
We are not trading next to other street food traders, now it’s against established brands, which was quite a learning curve. It’s taken quite a while to understand how we can work in that environment and how we can move forward.”
He said the return to London is supported by cash flow and funds from shareholders but Rola Wala would consider alternative financing to work with partners who could bring a level of sector experience.
