MAKKAH Foods has announced it is expanding into the hospitality business by opening a burger restaurant at its former shop.

British Pakistani brothers, Tariq and Usman Khan own Makkah Foods, an international supermarket in Dorset.

The company recently signed a deal to move their Parkstone store into a bigger premises.

Since the pair announced, they were moving to the Co-op, the future of Ashley Road’s existing shop has been questioned.

Now, the duo has decided to venture into creating a restaurant named Mak Burga in the former fruit and vegetable shop.

Usman added: “It's an idea that we've been thinking about for a while because in the Midlands and further up north, we've got businesses there.

“We’ve seen the popularity of the smash burger concept growing fast over there, but no one seems to be bringing it down south.

“Wherever there's a Makkah Foods, we should have a Mac Burga as well.

“It's going to essentially going to be the beef smash burgers with a concept of American-style fried chicken as well.”

Regarding the location Tariq added: “The more younger, fresher businesses that we have, the busier we'll get.

You see some high streets, there's no innovation, there's nothing there and then they just seem to slowly just die down.

“We do own quite a lot on that road, so we feel that we have a bit of responsibility to keep Ashley Road vibrant and busy.

“It's always been on our agenda in our portfolio with the sort of vacant position of the store in a good location and the timing.

“With the smaller store closing to make way for the Makkah Foods supermarket, we thought, rather than renting it out, and there's a lot of people who do want to rent it out, a lot of people wanted to open it as an off-license and take over the alcohol trade that's going to be lost in Co-op.

“We could have done that, but we want to do our kind of enterprise in there.”

Mak Burga is expected to open its doors in summer later this year.