It started, as many good stories do, with craft beer.
In 2010, Ayaz Jadoon opened a convenience store, Kwik Stop, on North Rhett Avenue in North Charleston. Pretty quickly, Park Circle residents started making requests for certain beers to fill the store’s coolers.
Owais Jadoon, Ayaz’s son who helps run the convenience store, remembered the demand for craft beer in the little store.
“By 2012, we’d installed a 14-door cooler,” he said. The early 2010s marked a heyday for craft brews, not just in the country but also in South Carolina, where local breweries led the charge to change archaic state laws. By 2007, it was finally legal to operate a taproom — and serve beer over 6.25% ABV (alcohol by volume) — in South Carolina.
Kwik Stop got in on the skyrocketing craft beer trend.
“We were just kind of in the neighborhood at the right place with the right equipment,” the younger Jadoon said.
But he’s not giving himself enough credit.
A brief family history
The origin story of Kwik Stop is rooted in craft beer, but the narrative has evolved over the past 14 years. Today, it includes more provisions, sure, but just as importantly, more meaning, too.
Most notably, of course, is the store’s recent rebranding. At the end of 2024 Kwik Stop became Jadoon’s Park Circle Market, a move that Owais Jadoon said was a long time coming.
“We wanted to put our roots down,” he said. “We want to have this represent the entrance to Park Circle. We want it to be something that is a quick stop, but beyond a Kwik Stop.”
Running a successful convenience store may be in the family’s blood. Ayaz Jadoon owned a small convenience store in Pakistan in the 1970s.
“Father had a very similar, very unique neighborhood market back in Karachi 40 years ago,” Owais Jadoon said. “It’s crazy to think about, but you know, from thousands of miles away, we’re kind of doing the same thing. It was unique in its time. … It had huge community support too.
“The majority of our products are from small, local businesses,” he continued. “It keeps the local economy going versus a huge chain coming in.”
At Jadoon’s, you can find goods from area producers, such as Sarah’s Dumps, Levity Cannabis Spirit, Life Raft Treats, Lowcountry Creamery, Scratch Cookie Co., Edisto Gold Honey and Prophet Coffee, which recently opened a coffee cart within Jadoon’s Market.
Owais Jadoon said that while Pakistan may have any number of political issues, at the social level, small businesses manage to thrive.
“You’ve got the butcher shop next to the milk shop next to the vegetable shop, all feeding each other in a local economy and it sustains an entire country,” he said. “Here in Park Circle, we have a little bit of that, too.”
After years of leasing the space, the Jadoons now own the land on which the market is located. And while that’s a good thing, it’s also a complicated one.
“As new property owners, we didn’t realize how all this worked,” the younger Jadoon said. “It was a lot of permitting.”
If you’ve driven past Jadoon’s Market recently, you’ve likely noticed the store’s snazzy new circular sign in the parking lot — one that is much shorter than the sign that previously held its place.
The reason? Hurricanes. If the pole at its original height were to fall, it could fall not onto the store’s property, but into the road. “It makes sense,” Jadoon said. “It’s just very expensive and very hard to figure out.”
Permits have been a hurdle this past year, but one thing that’s never been a challenge for the Park Circle store is consistent business. Jadoon said that the store, on average, sees about 250 customers a day.
Beer is still a big seller (have you seen their selection?), but Jadoon said that the market has so much more to offer these days.
Beyond beer
“We were known as the beer store. I’m really proud of our selection and happy about it,” Owais Jadoon said, “but for me, also, we do this, too. I try to bring more attention to the other things that we’ve put just as much thought into.”
You can get beer at Jadoon’s, but you can also get ice cream, snacks and locally made lasagna. The store has an extensive nonalcoholic and alternative beverage selection, as well as a carefully curated wine shelf. There’s even a section dedicated to Park Circle residents’ favorite pastime: disc golf.
Jadoon said Covid-19 inspired the store to stock a large selection of discs for folks looking to partake in outdoor, socially distanced activities.
While the younger Jadoon, who doesn’t drink, considers himself fairly well-educated on the beer, wine and alternative beverage markets, he admitted that he leaves disc golf selections to the experts.
“Disc golf folks are kind of like craft beer [consumers]. They’re super enthusiastic about it and they’ll let you know the latest and greatest [discs],” he said.
The customers are, in fact, always right at Jadoon’s. Jadoon said that he spends a lot of time reviewing how well products are selling in the store and listening to feedback from customers on the floor.
“It goes back to the community and the loyal customers, in the sense that they give us the freedom to try,” Jadoon said. “They are open to new things and new experiences. And then they’ll report back or the sales will show [if something worked.]”
Owais Jadoon said that the market gets maybe 100 new items a week — which means 100 old items are leaving shelves. “You have the velocity to respond quickly to what people are wanting,” he said. “From seeing it to just feeling it.”
He has a good feel for the store — he’s worked in it since he was a teenager.
“This place raised me,” he said. “We don’t have any sophisticated POS [point-of-sale] software. I need to work on that. I don’t have a huge database. I don’t have algorithms, like, you know, Walmart or something. [It’s] just literally me being here, talking to people.”
Now that the Jadoons own the convenience store and the land on which it sits, they believe the sky is the limit for growth. Jadoon said that the family hopes to develop the land and eventually add another, larger structure that is similar to the existing market.
“I think if I have more space, I can do a better layout,” Owais Jadoon said. “I can add a little bit of a kitchen element to it with Pakistani food. We can do a lot more of the market where [we bring in] more frozen, refrigerated and ready to go items … and make this a little bit more of a neighborhood place, which it already is, but make it even better for the community.”
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