Food / ALREADY!

13, Owns a Restaurant, and Pays His Own School Fees: Meet Malaki Conteh

Malaki Conteh, 13, owns Malaki's Food and Drinks, a Caribbean restaurant in Crystal Palace, London — and its profits fund his school fees and charitable projects.

By ALREADY! Editorial · 3 min read · October 25, 2026

Malaki’s shop in Crystal Palace, photographed in 2023. Image: South West Londoner.

Most 13-year-olds argue about what's for dinner. Malaki Conteh owns the place that serves it.

Malaki is the owner of Malaki's Food and Drinks, a small family-run Caribbean restaurant in Crystal Palace, London. The menu is the kind that makes you hungry just reading it: curry goat, jerk chicken, brown stew chicken, rice and peas, dumplings, patties, and red velvet cake. It's food with heritage in every plate — the flavours of the Caribbean, served in a neighbourhood restaurant with a teenager's name over the door.

Here's what makes this story different from a cute headline: according to his profile, the business is formally and substantially Malaki's. His mother and grandmother run the kitchen, and his father manages daily operations, but no family member takes remuneration or a profit share. The restaurant is his, in a real, documented way — not just a family business with a kid's face on it.

Malaki Conteh outside his business. Image: Reporter Gourmet / SWNS. Source ↗

And the profits go somewhere that will make a lot of adults pause. They fund Malaki's school fees, around £4,000 per term, and they are reinvested in charitable initiatives, including equine therapy and musical instruments for people who cannot afford them. Read that again: a 13-year-old is paying his own school fees with restaurant profits, and still finding money to help other people make music and ride horses.

Malaki's story doesn't stop at the restaurant door, either. His profile also notes that he became the first Black chief chorister at Chichester Cathedral. Music, food, leadership, charity — at 13, he's already living in several worlds at once, and leading in more than one of them.

RELATED WATCH / EQUINE THERAPYOpen player ↗

Related watch: an iHypnosisTM Clinic documentary on equine therapy, one of the causes discussed in this story.

That's why Malaki belongs on ALREADY!. This isn't a story about a kid who got lucky with a viral video. It's a story about ownership, responsibility, and generosity, all happening at an age when most people are still figuring out what they like to eat, let alone how to run a kitchen that feeds a community.

Crystal Palace has a restaurant with a 13-year-old owner. The owner pays his own school fees. And the food? Curry goat, jerk chicken, brown stew chicken — the kind of menu that brings people back, week after week, no matter who owns the place.