Raja Bazaar: A Pakistani, Indian, Arab grocery filled with life lessons

Photos courtesy of Haq Nawaz

Haq Nawaz, 45, opened his Brookfield grocery store Raja Bazaar in 2018. 

Raja Bazaar, with its zabiha, halal meat shop, at 3065 N. 124th St., sits inconspicuously in a small, red-brick building on the eastern edge of Brookfield, facing Wauwatosa. 

Don’t let its unassuming storefront fool you. The 1,975-square-foot store is packed to the brim with Pakistani, Indian and Arab groceries and a steady flow of regular customers of many ethnicities. Whether they drove two hours to get there or popped in from just around the corner, they often stay to chat with each other and the staff. 

If they have the opportunity, as one Wisconsin Muslim Journal reporter did this week, to ask owner Haq Nawaz, 45, of Brookfield, to show them around, he’ll take them through aisles of hundreds of colorful bags of rice of multiple varieties, famous and rare, flours of all types, lentils, spices, teas, dried fruits, teas and sauces. “There are tangy sauces, mint sauces and mango sauces,” he pointed to his left, as we walked. He paused and picked up a jar of garlic paste. “This is very popular. I think a lot of women and men don’t have time to grind their own at home. They just buy it. It saves time.

“And pickles—we can’t keep up with the demand for pickles,” he noted. On the right, we passed jars of tahini, the sesame paste used in many Arabic dishes, and cans of hummus, and other Middle Eastern basics.

We passed freezers that line the north wall from the front windows to the surprisingly spacious and shiny clean butcher’s station in the back. Frozen falafels and sambousa, okra and other vegetables, and several stacks of frozen fish filled the shelves.

As we walked, Nawaz stopped occasionally to share a story. Each tale concluded with a life lesson he has learned in his eight years as a business owner. “This store is not about money-making,” he explained. “It is a relationship store. I’m in the relationship business.”

Lesson 1: Business is a service.

In 2017, Nawaz’s wife, Shamim Haq Nawaz, pregnant with her second child, went to buy groceries. After she checked out, she was carrying their one-year-old Momin and a load of groceries. It was snowing outside.

“When she got back home, she told me how hard it was for her,” Nawaz recalled. “She couldn’t carry our son and a 20-pound bag of rice. So, I asked her, ‘How come you didn’t reach out to the store and ask them to help you out?’

“‘I looked at the guy at the counter and he turned away,’ she said. She realized he didn’t want to do anything for her.

“‘This is not how it should be,’ I said. We wondered how many other people go through something similar.”

That’s when the couple decided to create a grocery that really served its customers, Nawaz said. They opened Raja Bazaar in 2018.

“To this day, our employees ask customers if they need help carrying their groceries. If they do, they go out and put the groceries in their car,” he said. “In three years, we became known for our good service and products. By 2021, our business really picked up.”

Lesson 2: Listen to your customers.

“When we first opened the store, we didn’t have any idea what to order,” Nawaz admitted. “A storeowner closed a store in West Allis. I happened to find out about him, so I called him. He came over and helped us order some products.

“After that, we started asking customers what they’re looking for. Now, you see almost any famous Indian brand of rice, flour, lentils and spices. And the same goes for Pakistani and Middle Eastern products, whatever people tell us they are looking for. I learned about a lot of brands I never knew existed.”

He lifted a white bag of long grain rice. “This banni rice we have here is very special. Someone who comes here requested it. You don’t find it in many stores.

“This one is called Aahu Barah. In Farsi, it means ‘deer.’ See the deer on the bag,” he said, pointing to a picture. With the recent immigration of refugees from Afghanistan, it flies off the shelf.

“See these bags of organic rice. I was never a big fan of the organic thing. I thought maybe it was just a way to charge people more, saying a product is organic. Then a customer came in, asking where our organic products were. I asked him, ‘What’s the difference?’

“‘I’d rather spend my money on good food now than buy medicine later,’ he told me. I never thought about it like that. So, I told my wife, we need to get some organic products. Now we have organic flour, rice and other items. It sells slower but we are giving people the opportunity to buy it if they want it.”

Lesson 3: Finish what you start

Nawaz moved to Milwaukee in 2000, when he was 20, to study chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

Meanwhile, his mother aimed to find him a potential bride. “She was looking for somebody who would be able to come to this country and be able to help me, someone capable and smart.” She found the perfect person living near his sister, he said. “Now his wife Shamin Haq Nawaz takes care of the finances, including payroll, while managing the home front and raising their four children.

“I started working and then I got married, so I didn’t finish my degree,” he confessed. 

In 2015, Nawaz enrolled in UWM as a business major. “I had been just doing business from what I felt from my heart, but I realized I needed more knowledge and more understanding of business. I graduated just last year, in 2024, at 44. It took nine years.

“It was really hard. I quit 20,000 times in my head. I asked myself why I was putting myself through it. Then I thought, that’s why I came to this country, for education. I realized after 20-some years, I had still not done the first thing I committed to do. I knew that in order to move forward, I needed to go back to this first commitment and take care of it. 

“Getting the degree wasn’t about making money or finding another job. I was not looking for other opportunities. We are happy doing what we are doing. It was about the potential. I and my wife thought we can learn, we can do more. I’m so happy I was able to do it.”

His wife is now studying at UWM as an accounting major. “It’s even tougher for her because we have four children, 10, 8, 7 and 1.”

Left to right, Haq Nawaz, Hibbah, 8, Momin, 10, Kumayl, 7,  and Nawaz’s wife Shamim Haq Nawaz holds 1-year-old Salahuddine 

Lesson 4: Life is not easy.

“As I get older, I realize life is tough,” Nawaz reflected. “Nobody promised us an easy life. Islam offers a life of purpose, but not without struggle. You just make the best decision you can. As Muslims, we understand what’s right and wrong. We just need to do our best.”

Nawaz recalled long days and stressful nights of working and studying. “Now, when I look back at working 16-hour days, I don’t remember the stress and hardship. When the good days start coming, you tend to forget what happened. It seems like there was nothing hard.”

Not that it’s ever all smooth sailing, he acknowledged. “At certain times in my life, I wanted to help people, sometimes people very close to me, but I couldn’t. There are limits to what we can do. I realized I can’t have a guilty feeling about it. I am not in control.”

But, at home, surrounded by family and getting hugs from his children, “everything feels good.”

Lesson 5: Business is about relationships

“The biggest thing I’ve learned, the major thing I would say, is that a business is not separate from society. You cannot just sell something, go back home, and not get involved with people.

“And I want to share a story. Two families from the same part of Pakistan happened to shop here but they didn’t know each other. So, I told one of the families about the other family who came from exactly the same area in Pakistan you did. They said, ‘We’d like to meet them.’

“One day when the family came that lived a couple of hours away, I called the family that lives in Brookfield and they came. They got to know each other. One had a son and the other had a daughter. A year later, they had a marriage between them. Now the couple has a one-and-a-half-year-old boy.

“You cannot sell people something, take the money and go home. No. You talk with people; you understand them, and you create a sense of belonging for the people who come into your business.

“Many times, people tell us they love coming here. There is something special about this store.

“I took one employee with me to visit a bigger store. I said, ‘I wish I had that store.’ 

“When we came back to this store, he said, ‘Do you want me to tell you something? You took me to the bigger store, and I like big aisles and all that, but I didn’t feel anything over there. I feel much better coming to your store.’ 

“I think maybe it’s the way that we treat people. If we don’t have what they are looking for, I try hard to get it. And I try to find some way to compensate them so they won’t feel they came for nothing. I want them to know we’d love to have them back.”

Lesson 6: Work within your means

When Nawaz bought the store, he knew if they were successful, it would be hard to squeeze in the inventory. “It’s not even 2,000 square feet. I think the very minimum should be 2,500 to 3,000 square feet, with 1,000 square feet for a back room,” he said. 

But this is what they could afford, he said. 

When Babies R Us went out of business, they bought their shelving. That’s why the shelves have rounded, baby-proof corners, he pointed out. And you can still see the red “Sold” stickers on them.

The coolers and freezers came from a Pick n’ Save that was going out of business and they picked up some additional shelves during COVID, when an office was closing and selling them. 

“It took us about two months to figure out how we could lay this out in the store,” he said. Now he’d like to purchase taller shelves to take advantage of the vertical space available.

They’ve made due since opening in 2018. Carefully managing inventory because they have no where to store things, especially frozen items.