Help Lọlá Get Back on her Feet

Aim

Help Lọlá Get Back on Its Feet

Lọlá is a Nigerian restaurant in Muswell Hill, created from our love of food, warmth and hospitality, and our pride in sharing these with our community. We opened with a simple ambition: to serve authentic Nigerian cooking, prepared with care, in a welcoming place where people could come together, feel at home and make memories.

We invested our life savings in Lọlá and poured our hearts into building the restaurant and earning the support of our customers. Since reopening on 31 July 2025, we welcomed 3,576 guests and were beginning to rebuild the business with renewed hope.

Then, on 14 September 2025, shortly after 6am, we woke to messages from the police telling us that someone had entered the restaurant. We later learned that the person was our landlord. Following this, we were out of the premises and unable to trade for a month. We have also faced a proposed 46% rent increase, which we continue to dispute.

There has since been an important development: our landlord has reversed his position and is now willing to give us back the premises. We are grateful that there is now a way to return to the restaurant and work towards reopening. But getting the premises back is only the first step. After a month without trading, Lọlá needs support to recover, meet the costs of this difficult period and build a stable future.

We are raising £100,000 to help with legal costs, the essential costs of reopening and restoring the business, and the longer-term investment needed to grow Lọlá and build our brand. This support would give us a stronger foundation to reconnect with our customers, reach more people and develop the restaurant for the future.

Lọlá means a great deal to us. It represents our life savings, years of hard work, the dedication of our team and the relationships we have begun to build in Muswell Hill. It is more than a restaurant to us: it is something we have created with care, hope and determination. We do not want this difficult chapter to erase what we have built.

Our focus is on returning to the premises, reopening and getting Lọlá back on track. With the right support, we also hope to make the restaurant more resilient and give the brand room to grow for the long term.

Every contribution, whatever the amount, will help us move forward. If you are unable to donate, sharing this appeal with friends, family and local businesses would also mean a great deal and could help us reach someone who is able to support us. We will keep supporters updated and explain how the funds are being used.

Thank you for standing with Lọlá, believing in what we have built and helping us find a way forward.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 13th January 2027 at 11:20am