The Halal Food Cart Team Builds Outward from Trade & Tryon

Halal Food Cart is an undeniable staple of Charlotte — the self-explanatory business title plastered on all four sides of the cart that has stood strong at the crossroads of the Queen City, the intersection of Trade and Tryon streets in the center of Uptown, for more than eight years. Still, one-half of the husband-wife duo behind the business has remained enigmatic.

Unless you’ve happened to spot owner Khuram Bashir during one of his random check-ins at the iconic cart he opened at Trade and Tryon in summer 2016 or any of the three other carts he has spread throughout the city, chances are you’ve never seen the man’s face.

This is intentional, as the self-described “shy” owner likes to stay behind the scenes, preferring to highlight the work of others by showcasing his workers and stepson Christopher Collado, who owns Halal Food Cart’s brick-and-mortar restaurants Halal Street Food, in media stories.

Despite that, Bashir has been quietly growing a franchise of businesses built on the foundation of the original cart at Trade & Tryon. Now with four operational food carts, two brick-and-mortar shops, three additional carts under construction and four storefront leases signed to open new locations, Halal Food Cart and Halal Street Food has expanded its reach across the community to give back to the people it serves.

True to form, Bashir declined to be included in our photo shoot for this story, instead opting to feature his employees because “they do the work,” but he did agree to speak with Queen City Nerve to share more about everyone’s favorite Uptown food cart and the business’ recent growth.

An uncertain beginning

Lured by the promise of cheaper rent and insurance at the recommendation of his brother-in-law, Khuram and his wife Damaris moved their three children from the overpriced and oversaturated halal market of New York City to the novelty of Charlotte in 2011.

While Damaris worked as a hairstylist at her brother’s local salon, Khuram amazingly continued to work in NYC, commuting to the city by bus every other week to carry on his work in interior design, capitalizing on his architecture background to make enough money to pay his rent back in Charlotte.

He continued that exhausting routine for nearly seven years, even finding time to enter the food service industry while doing so.

After his brother-in-law convinced Khuram and Damaris to open a storefront in an old pizza joint along Independence Boulevard, the couple’s first brick-and-mortar restaurant, Mi Barrio Halal Latin Grill, opened in 2014, combining flavors from the couple’s Dominican and Pakistani roots.

After two years of back-breaking work, the duo still weren’t sure their business would survive. Having gone through a rigorous permitting process that lasted nearly three years, the couple opened the food cart in Uptown on July 4, 2016, taking staples from Mi Barrio’s menu to serve a unique blend of Mediterranean, Pakistani and Dominican flavors.

It was then that things started to change for the family.

“When we opened up the cart, then things started shifting,” Khuram said.

Now as he and his family have seen their business flourish, Khuram has been focused on giving back, driven by the same principles he has implemented in the food industry for over a decade now.

The Halal Foundation gives back

The Islamic perspective of “halal,” directly translated as “permissible,” requires meat to be raised and slaughtered according to God’s principles.

Western meat industries value meat by weight and slaughter animals in a way that keeps the animal’s blood within the meat, resulting in a heavier and more valuable product. This process is not halal, Khuram said. To make meat halal, the animal must be cut along its four jugular veins, allowing time for all the blood to drain from the meat.

Although strictly following the halal process can be costly, Khuram said he would not consider it permissible behavior to make more money through the North American practices, which he likened to selling milk diluted with water.

The meaning of halal is not only applied to diets for Khuram, who uses the principles of halal as a lifestyle guide for how to interact with and treat others, he explained. His dedication to not cheating his clients and following ethical codes in paying his taxes and employees is what makes his business halal, too.

Below the original cart’s “Cash Only” sign — a policy forced upon the business due to their location’s poor internet service – sits another sign reading “No tips accepted, please send donation [to] The Halal Foundation.”
The Bashirs built the food cart as a means to serve Charlotte’s workforce and provide good food for a fair price.

Attaching an additional tip on top of the meal’s price would contradict their goal, he insisted.

“We appreciate you with a smile. We appreciate you with a ‘thank you.’ You don’t have to do extra for us, let us do extra for you,” he said. “Just love our food, that is a great tip for us.”

Alas, Khuram found Charlotteans to be a gratuitous bunch dead set on giving back. It was then that he launched a more impactful cause for their gratuity.

At select carts and storefronts, there are boxes that customers can redirect their tip toward The Halal Foundation, which donates to foundations such as the Red Cross, disaster relief efforts, or organizations that build orphanage centers in Africa, Dominican Republic and Pakistan.

The cart’s motto is “No person leaves empty-handed.” If a person has no means to purchase food, Halal Food Cart will help them out.

Khuram estimates that, since the cart’s opening, it has distributed around 100,000 free meals throughout the community in organizational fundraising meals, providing iftar (breaking fast) during Ramadan and beyond.

After Hurricane Helene devastated large swaths of western North Carolina, Khuram has sent two food carts to Asheville to provide meals to residents and relief workers almost every weekend. The World Central Kitchen offered Khuram compensation for the free meals he was giving out, but he turned them down, as he does with any such offer, instead insisting that organizations redirect the funds back into their own foundations.

Along with the free meals the cart provides, the Bashirs give thousands of dollars to different organizations every week through The Halal Foundation.

Khuram Bashir builds a franchise unlike any other

When Khuram and his family moved to Charlotte, the halal market was nearly untouched. Stationed on Charlotte’s oldest and busiest street corner, the food cart has played its own role in the city’s growth while witnessing the change from a unique perspective.

The revitalization of Charlotte’s food scene in recent years means more competition, but Khuram isn’t worried. Asked if the boom was helping or hurting his food cart, Khuram smiled, leaned back in his chair and said, “It doesn’t matter.”

“In that sense, we’re blessed,” he explained. “It doesn’t bother us at all. I believe we continue to do good, and it has its own rewards.”

Read more: Is Charlotte’s Uptown Food Scene on the Verge of a Resurgence?

Those rewards are manifesting in the form of the business’s new brick-and-mortar locations. The first location opened in December 2021 at MoRa Point shopping center off Monroe Road.

In April 2024, they opened their second storefront in Camp North End. The representative that contacted the Bashirs about signing a lease did so due to his loyalty toward Halal Food Cart, having waited hours in line just for the chance to eat the cart’s renowned takeout dishes.

The business’s evolution into a franchise model hasn’t diminished the tight-knit vibe a food cart creates, as the Bashirs keep things in the Halal Food Cart family.

Instead of hiring new leadership from outside the business, Khuram gives members of his staff — made up of folks from Venezuela, Afghanistan, the Dominican Republic and other countries — the opportunity to run their own Halal Food cart. They pay for the cart’s construction costs, charge them a franchise fee and set them up at a good location to help make a future for themselves.

It’s a way of saying thank you to their dedicated employees, Khuram said. Despite the success the Bashirs have seen, Khuram said he strives to do more.

“I still feel like I’m not doing enough,” he said. “My wife and I… we continue to come up with the ideas, whether it’s for the business or how to help not only the community, Charlotte, but everywhere else as well. It’s never enough, and that’s how I take my life, I guess. Always need to strive [for] higher goals.”

Halal Food Carts are stationed at: 101 N Tryon St. in Uptown; 9430 University City Blvd.; 20833 Catawba Ave. in Cornelius; and 2407 West Roosevelt Blvd. in Monroe. They are open 10 a.m.-2 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and 10 a.m.-4 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Halal Street Food storefronts are located at 4044 Connection Point Blvd., Suite B; and 701 Keswick Ave., Suite 101 at Camp North End.