Renowned Kashmiri restaurant group Aagrah is set to double the size of its business as part of a five-year plan to increase its chain to 30 restaurants.

The Shipley-based company, which will be celebrating its 35th anniversary tomorrow, already has plans for two new restaurants in new territories.

And its range of Aagrah Tarka cooking sauces and chutneys, which were last year released on to the shelves of 45 Tesco stores through Yorkshire, have this week become available in 150 Asda stores in Yorkshire and the North-East, while they also hope Morrisons will begin stocking them later this year.

Managing director Mohammed Aslam said the company was looking at increasing the number of its restaurants over the upcoming years.

He said: “We have a plan, which started last year, to double the company in the next five years.

“We have probably achieved 25 per cent in a year-and-a-half, so we are pretty much on the way.”

Mr Aslam’s brother Sabir, the group chairman, started the business in 1976 as a mobile takeaway, operating from his cherished Commer Van, known as the Spice Pot.

Mr Sabir started the business while continuing his day job as a bus driver, working 18-hour days to get the business up and running.

It was while doing his day job that Mr Sabir’s luck changed as he struck up a friendship with a Barclays Bank manager who regularly travelled on his bus.After months of informal conversations, he was offered the chance to borrow £20,000 to develop his business, allowing him to develop a small unit in Westgate, Shipley, which he had previously bought.

He sold the Spice Pot for a profit of £300 in 1977 and used the loan to transform the former plumber’s shop and bakery into a 40-seater restaurant – the first Aagrah restaurant.

The business now operates 15 dining restaurants, including its current restaurant in Shipley, and the Midpoint Suite, in Thornbury, Bradford, serving more than one million covers per year.

Mr Aslam, who also worked as a bus driver and joined the family business in 1983, said: “I have always been a brand builder.

“It is one of the strongest brands in the country probably at the moment and I’m quite chuffed over it.

“And we have speeded up over the last two years. Next in our programme, we want about 30 restaurants in the next five years.

“We have a policy of going probably about 15 miles away from an existing Aagrah, so from the marketing point of view the main thing is already there, you don’t have to do much so we are jumping in 15 to 20 miles, sometimes ten miles, it all depends on the area.”

To mark Aagrah’s 35th anniversary, the restaurants will tomorrow be turning the clock back and offering a 1977 menu at 1977 prices.

Mr Aslam said the biggest change he had witnessed over the years was his customer’s appreciation of Kashmiri food.

He said that he biggest change is that people’s taste buds are ‘so much more aware now’