Customers at an Asian supermarket in east London have been filmed forming separate male and female queues during a busy promotional event. Footage from the Romford branch of Masala Bazaar shows shoppers apparently splitting into gender-divided lines as staff handed out free bottles of vegetable oil during the store's third anniversary celebrations.
The clips were recorded on August 28, with similar scenes reportedly occurring during the promotion, which ran from August 26 to 31. Shoppers were queuing for complimentary goods including bottles of cooking oil, meat joints and frozen fish as crowds gathered inside the supermarket.
Store denies organising queues
Although the footage appears to show men and women standing separately, the store insists the arrangement was not organised by staff. Zayuber, the branch manager, said the queues formed spontaneously because of the sheer number of customers trying to collect the free items.
He told the Daily Mail: "It was so overcrowded in here for the third anniversary. At events like this, we have a 'power hour' where we give out free gifts, so everyone wants them."
He added: "We told customers they needed to line up, but we can't control them. People automatically started queuing with the men on one side and the women on the other. After about a minute, everyone was back together."
Staff back up explanation
A colleague backed up his explanation, saying the two lines had formed simply as a way of dealing with the crush and distributing the promotional goods more quickly. He said: "We didn't tell anyone where to stand. They formed the queues themselves."
There were reportedly no signs or instructions at the store telling customers to form separate queues according to sex. The footage nevertheless sparked a heated reaction after being shared on social media.
Social media reaction
One commenter wrote: "Nobody passed a law saying England would adopt sex-segregated queues." Another shopper said married couples had deliberately separated so that both could collect promotional items.
A local woman who has lived in Romford all her life and works at a nearby gym said she had never witnessed anything similar. She told the publication: "I've never seen anything like that in another shop."
Masala Bazaar specialises in South Asian groceries and halal meat and is part of Euro Foods Group. The company was established by Bangladeshi-born British businessman Shelim Hussain, whose wealth has been estimated at £105million. It has branches in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea and Newport as well as Romford.
The controversy comes as Romford has undergone significant demographic change over recent decades. Census figures cited by GB News show the proportion of residents identifying as white fell from 95.2% in 2001 to 75.3%, while the Asian population rose from 2.1% to 10.7%.
