Operator profile: Nugs

Reis Esiroglu tells Lauren Fitchett about his future plans for Nugs, the founder’s fast-growing celebration of the humble chicken nugget...

“Well, they’re delicious – who doesn’t love a chicken nugget?” It’s fair to say Reis Esiroglu doesn't have to work too hard to explain why his street food concept Nugs has been such a hit since launching in 2020. After all, he’s right. Young or old, spice-lover or mild child, there are few who can resist the temptation of a crispy bite of chicken (or, for the plant-based, cauliflower).

Still, that didn’t guarantee a route to success – plenty of promising concepts struggle to maintain momentum, including many of the lockdown pop-ups of 2020. But Reis’ career in music and events, working with record labels and festival organisers – and, as a teenager, his years spent at his family’s Turkish restaurant in Essex – meant he had the experience to make Nugs stand out from the crowd.

“My life has always revolved around food,” Reis explains, “and I realised I would love to combine my passions. I started thinking about a concept that I could tour at festivals and we came up with the idea for Nugs.

“I tried different recipes, with a lot of help from my family and friends, and we eventually settled on one we liked. We had six events booked for summer 2020, but the plan was that I was going to do this on the side, it wasn’t going to be my main job.”

He started 2020 with high hopes. But, well, you know the rest. By spring, events were cancelled and Reis had lost his job, joining thousands of others looking for work. But his partner Charley Fairbrother (who Reis says is the “staple” holding the business together) saw the situation through an optimistic lens, encouraging him to seize the moment and bring Nugs to life.

So he did. At the height of lockdown. With two “tiny little friers” in their back garden and orders taken via Instagram. They sold out in their first week. And second. And third.

“I had said that if we got three orders in that first week that I’d be happy,” he says. “That would have at least been a start. When we did 30, I thought, ‘This is crazy’. Then we did 50 and it kept going up and up.”

Having outgrown the garden, they upsized, starting a residency at The Rising Sun in Hornchurch, Essex (which is still running today) and taking orders online. Since then, it’s been a case of enjoying the fruits of their labour, their profile boosted by Reis’ contacts in the events world, which has seen Nugs appear at the likes of Formula One and Reading Festival. The brand recently won Best Takeaway in the Havering Small Business Awards 2022 and, in the last few months, the team took on a second residency at The Garrison in Chelmsford.

“We haven’t stopped in the last two and a half years – we’ve been honing our craft, getting better and better,” Reis says. “We had a record week a few weeks ago. We want to grow as much as possible – my dream is to have shops up and down the country and get into big towns and cities.”

The main attraction on the menu is, of course, the nuggets, which are served in either their OG southern-fried form, or with buffalo, Korean, Carolina Reaper, jerk or katsu sauces. They are deliberately varied options, Reis tells me (“the nuggets are for the kids, the sauces are for the adults”), while there are also burgers, wraps, curly fries, tater tots and mac and cheese if nugs aren’t your thing.

It’s comforting fast food that has a grown-up edge and, at the same time, taps into the nostalgia of childhood chicken nuggets and chips dinners. And, of course, it hits the spot after a few drinks. “As we were originally doing this for festivals, we wanted something easy to eat, particularly when you’re hungover,” Reis says. “We thought, ‘What do people want to eat when they are drunk?’”

The scale of the UK street food explosion means there are few avenues that haven’t already been explored, particularly when it comes to fried chicken. Gnarly burgers and wings, often glazed in fusion flavours, are found up and down the country. But while there are traders serving up nuggets, Reis says Nugs (with its tagline of ‘Serious about nugs’) is the UK’s first fast food concept celebrating the humble chicken nugget.

“We thought no-one had really owned that space – they hadn’t elevated it and owned it,” he says. “They aren’t doing what we are doing with the different flavours and sauces. The nuggets are amazing, but the flavours are why people come back to us time and time again. We also do different monthly specials and are always trying to improve our recipes.”

Most recently, spurred on by loved ones’ difficulties with gluten, Nugs has switched from a panko breadcrumb to a gluten-free coating for all of its chicken. The goal is to eventually strip the menu of gluten entirely. It is a simple change, but one that reflects Reis’ desire for Nugs to grow, change and evolve – and it seems to be working.

“The amount of responses and well wishes we have had has been amazing,” Reis says. “People have said they’ve never been able to enjoy the same takeaway as their partners – now they’ve got something the whole family loves.”

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