Paki shop

Paki shop is a British informal and usually offensive term for a newsagent, convenience store, or similar shop owned by, or run by a person or people of South Asian birth or descent.

Origin
The term Paki was originally a shortening of Pakistani, but has spread to mean a person of any south Asian nation including India and Bangladesh - and to a lesser extent the term can sometimes include a person from a Middle Eastern nation. Thus "Paki Shop" can refer to a shop owned by someone of any south Asian or even Middle Eastern nation, by birth or decent, not just of Pakistan.

There is a stereotype that south Asian people in Britain own or run many small independent or franchise shops in urban and suburban areas. The term "Paki Shop" would usually refer to a local shop that is primarily a newsagent or convenience store, such a shop is also frequently a confectionery/sweet shop, tobacconists, stationer, and general store/corner shop, and sometimes an off license or a small post office, as well as a newsagent. This stereotype appears not to be restricted to the UK alone, in the American comedy The Simpsons, the Indian character Apu runs a shop in the form of his Kwik-E-Mart.

Sometimes the term is used to describe any newsagent/confectionery shop regardless of the shopkeepers ethnicity, even if they are white British.

Expected services
Generally products and services expected to be available in such a newsagent are: newspapers, magazines, greeting cards, cigarettes and other smoking related products, sweets/candy, crisps and other snacks, soft drinks, stamps, basic stationery, bus passes and travelcards for the area's public transport such as Transport for London, lottery and scratch cards, mobile phone top up and other facilities for the paying of bills such as gas and electric. Most of these shops in the UK open early, many open at 6am and some employ one or more "paperboys", that would normally deliver newspapers by bicycle early in the morning before school.

Convenience stores are generally expected to open later than most shops, and some especially in the US to be open 24 hours a day, they sell most things available in a supermarket although have a smaller amount of choice.

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