Yemeni Coffee Shops Are Booming Across The US – CoffeeTalk

Yemeni coffee is the number one coffee in the U.S., according to Ibrahim Alhasbani, founder of Qahwah House. The chain has 23 locations across Texas and New York, with hundreds of Yemeni coffee shops opening in recent years. Yemen is an ancient birthplace of the coffee trade, and immigrants fleeing its civil war have brought their culture to the U.S. in the form of cafes. Yemeni coffee houses are distinctive for their beautiful designs, late hours, coffee drinks with cardamom and ginger, and desserts that range from hazelnut kunafa cheesecake to decadent chocolate-dipped cakes.

Coffee prices have skyrocketed worldwide due to climate change, affecting exports everywhere. Coffee entrepreneur Mokhtar Alkhanshali, who grew up in coffee-obsessed San Francisco, said that Yemeni beans enjoy a mystique among connoisseurs because of their rich history and flavors. He believes that only the best coffee is getting out.

Most coffee consumed in the U.S. comes from Brazil and Colombia, subject to the same 10% tariffs as coffee from Yemen. Alhasbani imports his coffee from a family farm near the capital, Sanaa, but getting it to the port in Aden, hundreds of miles south, has become increasingly difficult. There’s no guarantee that a shipment of Yemeni coffee will even make it, and there is no guarantee that a shipment of Yemeni coffee will even make it.

The Yemeni cafe movement is very, very new, and there is no guarantee that a shipment of Yemeni coffee will even make it. Alkhanshali is the hero of The Monk of Mokha, a 2018 nonfiction bestseller by Dave Eggers, which followed his quest to bring single-origin Yemeni coffee to the United States. He fears for the fragile economic balance helping rural families in a county suffering from poverty and widespread food insecurity.

U.S. policies regarding Yemen have gone back and forth over the past decade. The Trump administration first designated the Houthi rebels as a terrorist organization in 2021, but the designation was revoked by Democratic President Joe Biden, largely to assist with Yemen’s humanitarian crisis. President Trump redesignated the Houthis as a terrorist organization last month, in March, meaning sanctions and penalties for anyone providing material support to the group.

Ninety percent of Yemen coffee comes from the territories controlled by the Houthis in Yemen, the mountain regions across Ibb, in Sanaa, and these provinces. Any trader, exporter, or importer buying coffee from these regions could technically be categorized as supporting terrorism, because it could trickle back down to this organization.

At one of his Qahwah House coffee shops in Dearborn, Alkhanshali was more concerned about high tariffs on Chinese-made paper coffee cups and Indian cardamom than legal imports of Yemeni coffee. The war has affected everyone, and the war has killed around a quarter of a million people, many of them civilians. Alkhanshali wants Qahwah House to be a welcoming place that helps Americans recognize Yemenis not as people associated with war and famine, but as the people who brought the world coffee.

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