General Trading & Restaurant Services
One café in Erbil in 2009, and everything that grew out of it: a buying desk that sources anything legal inside Iraq, five services for restaurants, and contract catering for the people who never get to leave the building.
Consistency is a trained habit, not a recipe. Hover a clip to watch it, or open it full screen.
Shalyar opened in 2009 as one café, a room that was never only about what was on the table. Everything the company does now was learned in it.
The room came first, and it set the standard for all of it: a place people came back to, and brought their families to, and stayed in longer than they meant to. Running it well meant learning to buy well, which supplier actually holds stock this week, what a fair price looks like, what to do when a delivery arrives short on the morning you needed it.
That knowledge is the company. It became a buying desk that will source anything legal inside Iraq and deliver it to any governorate. It became five services for restaurants, supplying them, running them, training their staff, giving them a hookah offer, feeding their people. And it became Khayri Shalyar, which does the same job for organisations that have to feed hundreds of staff every working day.
The café is still open, the line is now carried in venues across Erbil, and the name has gone further than the city, there are Shalyar branches abroad, in the Gulf and in China. What has not moved is where it is judged from: whether anybody wanted to stay at the table afterwards.
More about ShalyarShalyar buys, builds and feeds. The divisions share one supply line, one training standard and a single point of accountability, which is the only reason three different jobs come out the same way.
You tell us what to buy. We buy it, anywhere in Iraq.
Shalyar's trading division is a buying desk. Send us what you need: a list, a photograph, a part number, or just a description of the job. We find it, price it, inspect it and deliver it. If it is legal to trade in Iraq, it is in scope.
Supplied, managed, staffed or fed, whatever the room needs.
Five services under one division: we supply new restaurants with everything they need to open, we take over the running of restaurants that need it, we train the staff a business already has, we provide the hookah offer and the people to run it, and we cater the daily meals for companies feeding their own staff.
Feeding a workforce, every shift, without drama.
Contract catering and cafeteria management for offices, sites, camps and institutions, cooked fresh on a rotating cycle menu, served on schedule.
Eight frames from the three divisions. Each one opens the page it belongs to.
None of this is complicated. It is just done consistently, which is the part most operations lose first.
Every line is written down: origin, grade, pack size, certification, lead time. Only then is a price attached to it. A quote against a vague description is how substitutions get justified later.
We order to what the kitchen will actually cook next week, not to what is convenient to invoice. That is what keeps the cold room from filling with the wrong thing while a headline dish runs out.
Recipes are costed and portioned on paper. Hygiene checks are logged. Procedures are documented. It is the only version of a standard that survives a change of staff.
We review covers, waste, food cost and service timing while the habits are still forming, because a standard that is corrected in month one holds, and one corrected in month six does not.
The café taught the standard the rest of the company is held to: not whether the order was delivered, but whether anybody wanted to stay.
Buying, restaurant services and daily catering under one roof, so the responsibility never falls between two contractors.
Specifications, recipes and hygiene checks are written down, which is the only way they survive a change of staff.
We buy from suppliers we will face again next month, in the same market and the same currency as you. Nothing crosses a border, so nothing sits at one.
Whether it is a standing supply line, a restaurant to open or a cafeteria to run, the conversation starts the same way.
