And for fast-food delivery, it is anything but fast: it took more than
four hours for the KFC meals to arrive here on a recent afternoon from
the franchise where they were cooked in El Arish, Egypt, a journey that
involved two taxis, an international border, a smuggling tunnel and an heroic
young entrepreneur (Big X?) coordinating it all from a small shop here called
Yamama — Arabic for pigeon.
“It’s our right to enjoy that taste the other people all over the world
enjoy,” said the entrepreneur, Khalil Efrangi, 31, who started Yamama a
few years ago with a fleet of motorbikes ferrying food from Gaza
restaurants, the first such delivery service here.
There are no name-brand fast-food franchises on this 140-square-mile
coastal strip of 1.7 million Palestinians, where the entry and exit of
goods and people remain restricted and the unemployment rate is about 32
percent.
Passage into Egypt through the Rafah crossing is limited to about 800 people a day, with men 16 to 40 years old requiring special clearance. Traveling through the Erez crossing into Israel requires a permit and is generally allowed only for medical patients, businessmen and employees of international organizations.
Passage into Egypt through the Rafah crossing is limited to about 800 people a day, with men 16 to 40 years old requiring special clearance. Traveling through the Erez crossing into Israel requires a permit and is generally allowed only for medical patients, businessmen and employees of international organizations.
Palestinians generally refer to Gaza as being under siege or blockade by
Israel, and isolation from the world is among the most common
complaints of people here. That can create an intense longing for what
those outside Gaza see as mundane, or ordinary.
“The irregular circumstances in Gaza generate an irregular way of
thinking,” explained Fadel Abu Heen, a professor of psychology at Al
Aqsa University in Gaza City. “They think of anything that is just
behind the border, exactly as the prisoner is thinking of anything
beyond the bars.”
Professor Abu Heen noted that when Hamas, the militant Islamist group
that controls the Gaza Strip, breached the border with Egypt in 2008,
during the height of the Israeli siege, thousands of Gazans flooded into
El Arish and bought not just medicine and food staples but cigarettes,
candy and things they did not need — just to show they had managed to
bring something back from outside. Breaking the blockade, then and now,
is seen as part of resisting the Israeli enemy, giving a sense of
empowerment and control to people here, even if it comes in the form of
fried chicken.
Even as Israel has relaxed restrictions on imports over the past few
years, hundreds of illegal tunnels have flourished in Rafah. Weapons and
people are smuggled underground, but so are luxury cars, construction
materials and consumer goods like iPads and iPhones. And now: KFC.
Formerly called Kentucky Fried Chicken, a KFC franchise opened in El
Arish, just over Gaza’s southern border, in 2011, and in the West Bank
city of Ramallah last year. That, along with ubiquitous television
advertisements for KFC and other fast-food favorites, has given Gazans a
hankering for Colonel Sanders’s secret recipe.
So after Mr. Efrangi brought some KFC back from El Arish for friends
last month, he was flooded with requests. A new business was born.
“I accepted this challenge to prove that Gazans can be resilient despite the restrictions,” Mr. Efrangi said.
In the past few weeks, Mr. Efrangi has coordinated four deliveries
totaling about 100 meals, making about $6 per meal in profit. He
promotes the service on Yamama’s Facebook page, and whenever there is a
critical mass of orders — usually 30 — he starts a complicated process
of telephone calls, wire transfers and coordination with the Hamas
government to get the chicken from there to here.
The other day, after Mr. Efrangi called in 15 orders and wired the
payment to the restaurant in El Arish, an Egyptian taxi driver picked up
the food. On the other side of the border, meanwhile, Ramzi al-Nabih, a
Palestinian cabdriver, arrived at the Hamas checkpoint in Rafah, where
the guards recognized him as “the Kentucky guy.”
From the checkpoint, Mr. Nabih, 26, called his Egyptian counterpart and
told him which of the scores of tunnels the Hamas official had cleared
for the food delivery. He first waited near the shaft of the tunnel, but
after a while he was lowered on a lift about 30 feet underground and
walked halfway down the 650-foot path to meet two Egyptian boys who were
pushing the boxes and buckets of food, wrapped in plastic, on a cart.
Mr. Nabih gave the boys about $16.50, and argued with them for a few
minutes over a tip. A half-hour later, the food was loaded into the
trunk and on the back seat of his Hyundai taxi, bound for Gaza City.
Back at Yamama, Mr. Efrangi sorted the meals for his motorcyclists to
deliver to customers’ doorsteps. He said he limited the menu to chicken
pieces, fries, coleslaw and apple pie because other items could be too
complicated.
“Some clients would need a sandwich without mayonnaise, or a more spicy
one, or a sandwich with or without sauce,” he said. “That’s why we do
not bring everything, to avoid delivering the wrong order.”
Ibrahim el-Ajla, 29, who works for Gaza’s water utility and was among
those enjoying KFC here the other day, acknowledged that the food was
better hot and fresh in the restaurant, but he said he would be likely
to order again. “I tried it in America and in Egypt, and I miss the
taste,” he said. “Despite the blockade, KFC made it to my home.”
Mr. Efrangi may not have the fast-food market to himself much longer. A
Gaza businessman who asked to be identified only by his nickname, Abu
Ali, to avoid tipping off his competitors, said he
applied for a franchise from KFC’s Middle East dealer, Americana Group,
two months ago. Adeeb al-Bakri, who owns four KFC and Pizza Hut
franchises in the West Bank, said he had been authorized to open a
restaurant in Gaza and was working out the details.
“We need to get approval to bring chicken from Gaza farms with the KFC
standards, we need to make sure that frying machines would be allowed
in, we need the KFC experts to be able to head for Gaza for regular
monthly checkups,” Mr. Bakri said. “I do not have a magic stick to open
in Gaza quickly.”
Mr. Bakri was unaware of Mr. Efrangi’s delivery service, and when told
the details, he frowned at the four-hour odyssey from oven to table.
“We dump it after half an hour,” he said.
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