Ahmed Alwan’s small shop, in the heart of the New York neighborhood of the Bronx, has gone viral on social media after this young twenties offered a challenge to some of his customers: take all the products they can grab in five seconds and some extra tenths if they solve a simple mathematical calculation.
“If they answer the question they have five seconds to grab whatever they want, this challenge started about a week and a half ago and it is working very well and the community is showing me a lot of appreciation in different ways,” Alwan tells Efe among the hustle and bustle of customers. They leave and enter the premises first thing in the morning.
In the few moments that the clientele allows, mostly Latin Americans and African Americans who seem to opt for buying all kinds of lottery and gambling at that time in the morning, Alwan says that his contest began with the idea of ”entertaining , educate and help people at the same time. “
“So I hung up the recording of the first test in the TikTok application and it worked, and the first video was seen about twelve million times,” explains Alwan, a Yemeni-born American who works in the “cellar,” as it is known. in New York to this type of small supermarket, for seven years.
In TikTok has already uploaded about twenty videos, which can also be viewed on Instagram, and half a dozen of them have already exceeded one million views.
In the first recording, Alwan, who wants to be a pharmacist, asks a client “How much is ten times ten minus fifty?”. “Fifty,” the impromptu contestant replies before launching, first for the cat, before Alwan reminds him that the cat does not enter the package, and then for a shelf full of nuts and a water pipe.
While the client rushes in search of his awards, the young clerk counts without hurrying: “Five, four, three, two, two minus a quarter, two minus two quarters, two minus three quarters, one …”.
“The people I choose to play this game are people I have known for a long time, they are people in need,” most of the time, says Alwan, born in Buffalo, United States.
“Three times three, plus twenty, minus five” or “seven times seven, plus ten” are some of the questions he asks the lucky shoppers who are voracious to pick up their prize at the “Lucky Candy” winery ), while Alwan sets the pace with his slow countdown.
Bags of chips, the newspaper, some candy from the counter, speakers, headphones or even a hundred dollars from the cash register are some of the products that winners of this unusual and viral contest take away.
Alwan says that his father, the store owner, sees well what he does and points out that the money from the products pays out of his pocket.
“My father is happy, he is very happy that he represents Islam in a good way and that he shows love for the community by giving him back (what he has given me) and encourages me to continue,” says the young man who has made the turn this day in the morning, which runs from six to twelve noon.
The small shop, where all kinds of products are stacked and where coffee is also served, is filled with people from the neighborhood, workers entering and leaving the subway station, which runs several meters above the street, retired and students from a nearby school.
His father opened it a decade ago and Alwan combines his studies at the university with work in the supermarket.
He assures that some of the participants in his game, after taking all the products they were capable of in the time he gave them, asked to exchange them for money, which he agreed to.
He says that to cover the costs of the contest and also to launch a new project in order to help the poor in the neighborhood, especially those who are homeless, he has launched a campaign to raise funds.
And given the collection achieved in just eleven days, more than $ 8,500, it seems that the virality of his videos is also becoming economically profitable.
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