Avret Singh Lalpurwal, 45, was the owner of Uni Food & Wine, the off-licence shop in Frideswide Square, Oxford, when the shop lost its licence following an investigation from Trading Standards.
The shop was found to have been selling illegal tobacco products, including vapes and nicotine pouches, and Lalpurwal faced criminal charges for the offences.
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Since then, the Frideswide Square off-licence has been rebranded as TNT Convenience Ltd and taken over by the owner’s son, Rajmeet Singh Lalpurwal and continues trading under a new alcohol and tobacco licence.
Uni Food and Wine before its rebrand to TNT Convenience (Image: Contributed)
Lalpurwal said the convenience store would be “completely new” under the ownership of his son, and said he sold the business to Rajmeet so he could pursue other ventures, with plans to open a new Afghani restaurant in Botley Road.
And now a second shop will continue the family business, as Avret Lalpurwal’s wife, Manpreet Kaur Lalpurwal, has applied for a licence to open a new shop at 133 Botley Road, called Botley Booze.
A new company was set up in her name on March 4 and a premises licence application was filed with Oxford City Council the following week.
It proposed the sale of alcohol from the shop with opening hours between 8am and 11pm and described the business as a ‘convenience store with an off licence’.
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Lalpurwal confirmed to this newspaper that Mrs Manpreet Lalpurwal is his wife and will be responsible for running the business, and said she hopes to open the shop during the last week of April.
The new shop’s premises, at 133 Botley Road on the corner with Earl Street, was previously Chinese takeaway Green Bamboo before it closed several years ago.
Green Bamboo in Botley Road is set to become an off-licence (Image: Newsquest)
Although permission was granted in November 2024 to applicant Avtar Singh, the changes were never realised.
It is understood that the applicant is Avret Singh Lalpurwal of the former Uni Food and Wine convenience store, with a different spelling of his first name.
If the licence is granted, it will be the second off-licence shop owned by the Lalpurwal family on or near the Botley Road.
Avret Lalpurwal will be sentenced for the illegal sale of vapes in his shop on May 29, after previously pleading guilty at Oxford Crown Court.
Illegal vapes found in Uni Food and Wine (Image: Oxford City Council)
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He was due to be sentenced at Oxford Crown Court on Tuesday, November 18, but this was pushed back as Lalpurwal was unrepresented.
Trading Standards said in November last year that officers had seized more than 1,400 illegal vapes from his shop since 2022, the largest amount ever confiscated in Oxfordshire at that time.
The county council is also seeking to recover around £19,500 in proceeds of crime.
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