Our story
From ginger shots to GULI.
Two cousins from Cardiff, one family kitchen, and a drink that refused to stay a side project.
- 2023
A rough pregnancy and a good idea
GULI starts in a family kitchen. Khalid's wife was going through a really difficult pregnancy and not much was helping — so Faheem started pressing fresh ginger shots for her. They settled her stomach, and they tasted far better than a ginger shot has any right to.
- Ramadan 2023
Sold out in two days
If they could help one person feel better, they could help a whole community of people fasting. We made our first proper batch for Ramadan — it sold out in two days, and we spent the rest of the month pressing ginger as fast as we could.
- The pivot
Thousands of shots, one hard decision
Word spread, and before long we were selling thousands of shots a month. But fresh-pressed juice is a hard thing to scale, and we'd rather stop than cut corners. Faheem went back to engineering — keeping one foot behind the bar, working part-time in coffee shops and becoming lead barista at Voyage Lounge in Knightsbridge, where he helped set up the front of house and led the team.
- The relaunch
Mocktails, matcha and a festival queue
Drinks and desserts never stopped being our shared obsession. We came back at the Halal Food Festival with a new idea: signature mocktails and whisked-over-ice matcha, made fresh in front of you. The queue told us we were onto something.
- 2025
A thousand cups and counting
We took the bar on the road — events, festivals and melas across South Wales — and poured over a thousand cups within a few months.
- 2026
Back and bigger
After a winter break we're back: growing the menu, expanding the business, and bringing the bar to more weddings, festivals and private events than ever.
The rule hasn't changed since the first ginger shot: nothing goes in the cup that we wouldn't drink ourselves.
— The GULI cousins