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If you live in a place where there is not a Yemeni coffee shop, don’t worry—there’s probably one on the way. Yemeni coffee shops first began gaining traction in the U.S. in 2018, and now there are hundreds of them in metros around the country. Haraz Coffee, one of the leaders in this category, started in 2021 with a single shop in Dearborn, Michigan. As of July 2026, the company has 59 locations, and over 250 locations are in development.
In this episode of the Coffee Think Tank podcast, I spoke to Hamzah Nasser, founder and CEO of Haraz Coffee. Nasser is from the central Juban district of Yemen and moved to Detroit when he was six. He’s taken an unconventional path to coffee business ownership: he ran a gas station and became a truck driver before realizing he wanted to start a coffee brand. He opened the first Haraz Coffee in 2020.
We discussed what it’s been like to run a brand that is in high-speed takeoff mode, how he developed a franchising model to power expansion, created a core menu that is adaptable for different markets, and Nasser’s plans to go global with Haraz.
What You’ll Learn:
- What Haraz looks for in a franchisee, and how the company built out training, design, and project management support to protect the brand at scale
- How Haraz Coffee is diversifying its menu as it expands to new communities
- Why some Haraz locations stay open as late as 3 a.m.
- What Nasser believes makes Haraz unique, from sourcing Yemeni coffees to making custom evaporated milk
- How matcha and tea came to make up roughly a third of Haraz’s sales, and how Nasser plans to build out that category
- Nasser’s plans for international expansion, including 14 signed locations in Canada and a future bet on Saudi Arabia
My Key Takeaways
Here are a few pieces of the conversation I found interesting.
Yemeni Coffee Shops Are For Everyone
Nasser opened the first Haraz Coffee to serve Dearborn’s Yemeni and Middle Eastern community. The early menu reflected that by focusing on traditional Yemeni coffee drinks which featured cascara (coffee husks), black tea, and regional spices (like cardamon, ginger, and cinnamon). But as Haraz expanded to new markets, the brand slowly expanded the kinds of drinks and food it serves. By the time Haraz opened its eighth location—in Charlotte, North Carolina—the customer base looked nothing like it did in Dearborn.
“Our customer base is no longer Middle Eastern,” Nasser said. “And our menu has evolved. We’re serving all these lattes, all these matchas. And then Yemeni drinks are only down to four drinks that we were serving.”
Haraz has earned a name as one of the earlier pioneers of the Yemeni coffee movement in the United States. Moving forward, Nasser is clear that he wants to be known as a specialty coffee shop first with a Yemeni cultural heritage. The company sources coffee from Yemen and roasts it in the United States, and still serves traditional drinks like jubani, a decaf-style drink made mostly of coffee husks, cinnamon, and ginger. But the day-to-day sales mix now looks a lot more like a conventional specialty coffee shop.
Late Hours Are a Business Model
The number of coffee shops open late fell after the COVID-19 pandemic, along with all foodservice categories, but one characteristic of Yemeni coffee shops like Haraz is that they are often open late—sometimes extremely late. Nasser said that most of his shops are open until late at night, with a few open as late as 3 a.m.
Nasser frames this as giving customers a deliberate alternative to bars rather than just having stores with extended hours. “We have halal food, so we call these [coffee shops] the halal bars now,” he said. “You don’t have to go out to the bar and have a drink. And you can just go have some coffee.”
Nasser discussed how a few Haraz locations in New York were packed with people during Ramadan. He’s turned heads as people pass by the shop, packed with people late into the might. “They’re like, what the heck is this place full of people at 1:30 in the morning, and they’re not drunk,” he joked.
Compete With Yourself, Not The Market
Nasser said he likes to follow his internal compass and feel the direction of the company, rather than worrying about what everyone else is doing. He says it’s one of the ways he’s been able to steer Haraz in a unique direction that he doesn’t see as fitting neatly into any particular style of coffee shop. “Never look at competition. Make yourself your own competition,” he said. “We don’t focus on anyone else. We focus on our product, our menus.”
He also acknowledged the fear that comes with the first big move one makes as a business owner: maybe it’s the first lease you sign or the first big equipment purchase. Even as he’s grown, Nasser said that fear doesn’t go away, but it has evolved. “The first move that you make—that is the scariest one,” he said. “But then the minute you do it and it succeeds, it becomes fun.”
