We’ve all been there: the post-Timepiece pilgrimage, stumbling through the depths of Sidwell Street. Students don’t end up here because it is simply “on the way home”. They come in pursuit of something more, something to spice the night up. That place- the one we have queued up for so many times it feels like our second home – is Efes Grill.
From its humble beginnings as a local business to its dominance of the late-night post-club kebab scene, the shop has become iconic for many reasons. On an episode of Off the Page with Exeposé, I sat down with Efes owner Onur and his brother Rodi to find out how they built their late-night kebab empire.
Most students know the Efes brothers. Both are the true definition of BNOCs (Big Names on Campus, for those unaware), with their faces now familiar across the student and local communities since 2022. It was four years ago, just after they set up the business, that the foundations of this Exeter landmark began to form.
Originally, the brothers set the business up as a Turkish dine-in restaurant. However, after noticing the swarm of students walking past their shop late at night, they quickly realised the opportunity in front of them and decided to open for the late-night crowd. As Rodi explains, “we’ve got an understanding of the late-night culture, what’s going on and what the trends are. My brother saw the opportunity and decided to go full head-on with it, and he’s turned it into what it is today.”
“…we’ve got an understanding of the late-night culture, what’s going on and what the trends are. My brother saw the opportunity and decided to go full head-on with it, and he’s turned it into what it is today.”
Rodi, Efes Grill
The starting point for this late-night venture was simple: play nostalgic sing-along music. I remember my first experience there back in 2023, when the speakers were blasting what most would call ultimate “white girl music”. Taylor Swift one minute, Adele the next. Honestly, what more could you ask for from a kebab shop?
Onur quickly noticed the effect it had on customers. “It was busy, not as busy as how we have become busy now,” he recalls. “I started playing sing-along music, and I noticed people singing along and having a good time.”
Realising the growing popularity, Onur began recording short clips of customers enjoying the music and posting them online. One video featuring an Adele song received around 2.1 million views. “I took one video of an Adele song, I posted it, and it got like 2.1 million views,” he says.
The video was uploaded just six months after Efes first opened and helped cement the shop’s reputation among Exeter students. Onur remembers the moment as “crazy”, explaining that “since then I’ve kept doing it, kept doing it, and it just became something massive. Everyone was coming to Efes not just to eat, but to actually enjoy themselves.”
That focus on atmosphere and customer enjoyment has helped build Efes Grill into the late-night institution it is today. Built around both students and locals, Onur and Rodi are well aware that the community has played a major role in their success. As Onur puts it, “Freshers’ Week, within a week, or even the first few days, everyone literally finds out about Efes. Everyone’s posting videos saying if you’re going to Exeter Uni, you need to go to Timepiece or Fever, but you have to come to Efes.”
“Freshers’ Week, within a week, or even the first few days, everyone literally finds out about Efes. Everyone’s posting videos saying if you’re going to Exeter Uni, you need to go to Timepiece or Fever, but you have to come to Efes.”
Onur, Owner of Efes Grill
As their popularity grew, the brothers looked for ways to make things easier for students navigating Exeter’s nightlife. This led to the opening of Efes Express, designed for those moving between the city’s clubs. “With Efes Express, I’ve just made it easy for students as well,” Onur explains. “Instead of sometimes having to walk all the way down the street and then walk back up, now they can go straight from Fever to Efes Express.”
For Rodi, the formula behind the shop’s success is simple. “It’s not just food, it’s the people, it’s the vibes, it’s everything.”
The numbers reflect that success. In just four years, the brothers estimate they have processed well over 100,000 orders each, with as many as 700 customers passing through the shop between midnight and 3am on their busiest nights.
Despite this scale, they insist their success comes down to building genuine relationships with customers. As Rodi explains, “just being down to earth and getting to know people, speaking to students, seeing what they want, seeing if we can help them in any way, even sponsoring things. They’re giving it to us, so we give it back to them. It’s teamwork.”
Of course, the late-night rush also brings its own challenges. Onur laughs when describing the drunken ways students sometimes attempt to pay for their food. “What irritates me the most is people trying to pay with driving licences, Snapchat, anything they can find,” he says. “I have to teach these students how to pay properly. Just use Apple Pay.”
“What irritates me the most is people trying to pay with driving licences, Snapchat, anything they can find…”
Onur, Owner of Efes Grill
Despite the occasional chaos, the brothers emphasise that students are well behaved. “Students are well behaved,” Onur says. “We’ve had Efes for so long now, and we’ve never even had to hire a security guard. Not once has there been a fight in the restaurant.”
They also see the shop as something of a safe space during Exeter’s nightlife. “We’re a safe zone for people to come in,” Rodi explains. “Sometimes someone runs in and says someone’s bothering them, so we go out and have a look. We’ve grown up in pretty rough areas, so we’re used to dealing with that.”
Sidwell Street itself has a reputation among students for not being the most scenic or cleanest part of Exeter, but for Onur, it feels far calmer than the environment he grew up in. “People say things about Sidwell Street, but to me it’s normal. It’s like heaven compared to where I’m from,” he says.
“I grew up in Handsworth in Birmingham. My dad had an off-licence there, and someone was once shot in the shop over a watch. Things like that were normal where I grew up.”
Over time, Efes has become more than just a takeaway. In many ways, it has developed into something resembling a late-night welfare service for students. Customers often stay to chat with staff, sometimes asking for advice about relationships or university life. As Onur explains, “sometimes they ask for advice. It could be girl advice, boy advice, or even about their studies. It could be something small, I say, that helps them. It’s something you don’t get at every kebab shop.”
That connection often means the brothers go the extra mile for customers. Rodi laughs that students sometimes “play on our soft hearts”, admitting that “honestly, we give out quite a lot.”
The shop’s popularity has also attracted attention beyond the student body. Well-known visitors have included Big John, ArrDee, Ibiza Final Boss and Big Narstie. For the brothers, these visits are meaningful not because of celebrity status, but because of the excitement they generate within the community. As Onur puts it, “it takes five minutes, but it means a lot to me. It means a lot to the community. Everyone talks about it for ages, ‘look who came to Efes.’”
Social media has played a major role in spreading the shop’s reputation beyond Exeter. With more than 18,000 followers on Instagram and over 20,000 on TikTok, Efes has become something of an online phenomenon. Onur says that if he could give advice to anyone starting a business, it would simply be that “social media is everything.”
That reputation has even travelled internationally. Onur recalls how his cousins were once in a lift in Barcelona and mentioned Exeter, only for someone else in the lift to immediately recognise the city because of Efes and say they loved it.
Four years after opening their doors, Efes has become far more than just a late-night takeaway. For Exeter students stumbling out of Timepiece at 2am, it has become something of a rite of passage, a place where the queue is long, the music is loud, and the only words known to anyone are ‘Chicken Box,’ ‘Salad,’ and ‘Garlic Sauce.’
