The Increasing Expansion Of Yemeni Coffee Houses – CoffeeTalk

Hamzah Nasser, a former truck driver and founder of Haraz Coffee House in Dearborn, Michigan, has faced challenges due to the Israeli military bombing of Yemeni port Hudaydah. His monthly coffee shipments have been arduous, facing warring factions on land and rebel fire by sea. Nasser plans to open many more Yemeni cafes, which require Yemeni coffee. He has expanded his business from hauling parts for Ford to buying a 70,000-square-foot building in Dearborn that houses the company’s vehicle prototypes. His headquarters now hold two industrial roasters and a bakery, where a pastry chef recently arrived from France to train his staff.

Nasser’s franchising team is crunching numbers on where Haraz should open next. He intends to double his locations to 60 in the next six months, initially seeking to open cafes in Arab neighborhoods or near mosques. However, his search has expanded to anywhere that’s young and diverse, or where families will linger late into the night and buy multiple rounds of $7.95 pistachio lattes.

Coffee shops owned by Yemeni Americans are a mainstay in immigrant communities like Dearborn, the Arab American-majority suburb of Detroit where Nasser moved from Yemen at age 6. The country is one of the original homes of coffee culture, with centuries-old recipes and brewing methods, and its earthy beans are prized. Yemeni cafes are helping bring back an evening cafe culture not seen much in the United States since the “Friends” era.

Haraz Coffee House, a Yemeni coffee chain, is gaining popularity through franchising, with all three founded within miles of one another in suburban Michigan. The brands share menu staples like cardamom-spiced chais and pistachio lattes, which are propelled by TikTok reviewers who are happy to parse subtle differences in flavors and vibes. The franchisees, including single proprietors and larger-scale investors, have been willing to spend up to $500,000 to open new locations, including a $50,000 franchise fee.

Nasser has had little trouble courting franchisees willing to spend up to $500,000 to open new locations, whether single proprietors or larger-scale investors. Fellow Yemenis make up a small percentage of the new owners, and Don Tepman, a commercial real estate investor, recently signed his first lease with a Yemeni cafe in Northern California and is in discussions for several more. He first heard about Yemeni coffee through reports of packed strip mall parking lots that were once evening dead zones. If there’s a ceiling to the trend, he isn’t seeing it yet. But only a handful of brands will ultimately survive.

Haraz Coffee House founder Hamzah Nasser has dreams of adding hundreds more in the next few years, expanding abroad, and putting Haraz on a stock exchange, just like Starbucks. He and his wife found a location, an old insurance office on the main drag in Dearborn, where they installed a bar with honeycomb tiles that evoked khaliat al-nahl, a cheese-filled Yemeni bread, and transformed solid walls into wide, multipaned windows. On opening day, customers lined up hours before opening.

Franchising fees and four percent royalties have helped Nasser expand back at headquarters without taking on outside investors. Along with shipping woes (the coffee has been rerouted from Hudaydah to Aden), his preoccupations include tariffs — increasing coffee prices by $1.20 per cup — and sales trends like Dubai chocolate, a TikTok-famous confection involving pistachio, phyllo, and tahini.

Farah Khan and her husband, Hamza Shaikh, opened their first Haraz, which replaced a Starbucks, and were already plotting their next two openings due to rumors of competitors eyeing nearby storefronts.

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