Bristol SweetMart

Bristol Sweet Mart was founded in 1978 by Kassam Ismail Majothi and his wife Fatma, who arrived in Britain after being expelled from Uganda in the early 1970s and built a single grocery unit on St Marks Road into what is now described as the largest supplier of ethnic foods and spices in the South West. Kassam Majothi died in 2002, and the business has continued under his four sons, daughter and grandchildren. The shop now spans several adjoining units at 71 to 84 St Marks Road, combining a retail grocery stocking more than 9,000 food and drink products with a wholesale operation supplying restaurants and a deli counter selling home-style curries, fresh snacks and Indian sweets made on site. It remains under single family ownership and has not opened branches elsewhere, trading from the same stretch of St Marks Road in Easton where it began.