A couple of weeks ago, when Hamzah Nasser learned that the Israeli military had bombed the Yemeni port of Hudaydah, he knew he had a problem. His monthly coffee shipments already involved an arduous journey from the country’s mountainous interior to his cafe in Dearborn, Mich. — facing warring factions on land and rebel fire by sea. Now their usual path was blocked.
“It’s getting a little bit stressful,” Nasser said. A Yemeni cafe requires Yemeni coffee. And Nasser, who plans to open many more Yemeni cafes, needs a lot more beans.
Nasser, a former truck driver, opened his first Haraz Coffee House in Dearborn four years ago. Since then, he has gone from hauling parts for the likes of Ford to buying a 70,000-square-foot building in Dearborn that housed the company’s vehicle prototypes. His headquarters now holds two industrial roasters and a bakery, where a pastry chef recently arrived from France to train his staff. In an office upstairs, his franchising team crunches the numbers on where Haraz should open next.
Increasingly, the answer is: everywhere. Nasser, who intends to double his locations to 60 in the next six months, originally sought to open cafes in Arab neighborhoods or near mosques. But 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.
Chances are, the coffeehouses will wind up just a short distance from another Yemeni cafe.
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 in the early 1990s 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. For Nasser, entering immigrant-run cafes where card-playing old men would linger for hours, shouting orders through plumes of smoke, was like visiting home.
But he and other entrepreneurs have discovered a much broader appeal, riding a wave of demand nationwide for “third spaces” — gathering places outside of the home and work — that are open late and don’t involve alcohol. Yemeni cafes are helping bring back an evening cafe culture not seen much in the United States since the “Friends” era. The look has been updated. At Haraz, the glossy aesthetics of a V.I.P. airport lounge meet the energy of a student union during finals week — a place where you can work, gossip or flirt under Instagram-friendly light, late into the night.
“There’s a clear gap in the market,” said Bahaa Kaddoura, a franchising consultant who has helped Nasser strategize his rapid expansion. “People just need a nice place to hang out.”
Along with other chains like Qamaria Coffee and Qahwah House, Haraz is seizing the moment through franchising. All three were founded within miles of one another in suburban Michigan. And along with late hours — generally 11 p.m. or later — they share menu staples, like cardamom-spiced chais and pistachio lattes. (The brands are propelled by TikTok reviewers happy to parse subtle differences in flavors and vibes.) The reviewers also share complaints, about pricey lattes and long waits for chai during the Friday evening rush.
Nasser has had little trouble courting franchisees willing to spend up to $500,000 to open new locations (including a $50,000 franchise fee), whether single proprietors or larger-scale investors who would normally open a Chick-fil-A or a Buffalo Wild Wings. Fellow Yemenis make up a small percentage of the new owners. “I’m working with a guy named Cody in Colorado,” Nasser said. “Can you believe that?”
Dan 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. “I’ve never seen such a sudden burst of interest in a retail concept in my career,” he said. If there’s a ceiling to the trend, he added, he isn’t seeing it yet. But only a handful of brands will ultimately survive.
Nasser said he doesn’t mind the competition (though he regrets not patenting his pistachio latte recipe). His dreams include adding hundreds more in the next few years. To expand abroad. To put Haraz on a stock exchange, just like Starbucks.
He previously had other dreams. He started trucking after growing weary of running a gas station in East Detroit in his 20s. The money was good — enough so that he bought three more semis and hired drivers — and he started a side hustle importing Yemeni coffee through family connections. When Nasser and his wife decided it was time for him to stop driving, opening a cafe was logical.
On the road, he would often stop at Starbucks and other chains, mostly to escape the isolation of the cab. But he observed that they emphasized in-and-out efficiency over coziness. His own cafe would be a place to relax and socialize, he decided, like the old cafes he grew up with, but updated with a modern look he’d seen visiting family in Dubai. “We wanted to bring that clean atmosphere,” Nasser said. “It says, ‘You’re safe here.’”
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 — not only to let light in, but also out, so that the shop would glow and beckon customers at night.
On opening day, customers lined up hours before opening. Nasser recalled one complaint: His customers, many of them fellow immigrants, were tough, expecting gold forks like the ones back home, not plastic. “If you can make it in Dearborn, you can make it anywhere,” he said. (The franchise’s forks are now golden.)
Nasser’s vocalness on matters of politics and religion, including old tweets that were offensive to Shiite Muslims, have occasionally caused local controversy. (Nasser, who is Sunni, apologized, and local religious leaders held a unity rally in his parking lot.) But the locals kept coming, as did calls about opening chain locations.
Franchising fees and four percent royalties have helped Nasser expand back at headquarters, he said, 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. “They’re so viral right now,” Nasser said. “I don’t know when they’re going to die out.”
The chocolate was, for now, still selling out daily in Philadelphia, where Farah Khan and her husband, Hamza Shaikh, opened their first Haraz. They had considered a tea and samosa shop inspired by their shared Pakistani heritage but had been charmed by a visit to a Yemeni cafe and made a point of touring all the brands in Michigan. They said their decision was based on which had the best coffee — and the best growth prospects.
Opening their first Haraz, which replaced a Starbucks, had been a whirlwind — more time away from her kids than expected, Khan said, and more fighting to keep up with the crowds without burning out staff. But the couple were already plotting their next two openings. There were rumors, after all, of competitors eyeing nearby storefronts. “Luckily,” she said, “we’re the first.”
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