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Yemeni-owned coffee chains are expanding rapidly across the United States, with around 30 Yemeni coffee brands now operating in the country, even as the civil war in Yemen disrupts the supply chains that bring the coffee to market, according to multiple reports published in late April and early May 2026.The scale of the expansion is described differently across sources. NPR reported in April 2025 that “hundreds of Yemeni coffee shops” had opened in the U.S., a figure that counts individual locations. Daily Coffee News placed the number of distinct Yemeni coffee brands operating nationally at around 30 as of May 2026. Among the most prominent chains, Head Topics reported that Qahwah House now has over 30 locations nationwide and is preparing to open its 36th U.S. location in Philadelphia. NPR had placed the same chain at 23 locations in April 2025, a difference that reflects the chain’s growth over the intervening year. Qahwah House founder Ibrahim Alhasbani established the business in 2017.Other chains are also adding locations. The Almanac reported in January 2026 that Arwa Yemeni Coffee, founded in Texas in 2020, holds locations across Texas, Illinois, Connecticut, and California, with plans to expand into five additional U.S. states. In the Silicon Valley region of California, Milyar Café debuted in Santa Clara, while the Sana’a chain expanded to Mountain View and Redwood City and announced a further location in Sunnyvale, according to the same report.Culture writer Shaistha Khan, writing for Fast Company Middle East, described the sector as “expanding at a pace that contrasts with the stagnation of global coffee brands.” Khan also attributed the commercial appeal of the cafés in part to the coffee itself, noting that “the success of these cafés is attributed to the high-altitude farms and environments where the coffee is grown, creating a distinctive flavor profile.”The expansion is unfolding against a difficult supply backdrop. According to NPR, approximately 90 percent of Yemen’s coffee originates from territories controlled by Houthi forces, creating what the report described as terrorism-risk concerns for importers. Alhasbani sources his coffee from a family farm near the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and NPR reported that transporting that coffee to the port of Aden has become increasingly difficult. The United Nations has estimated that the Yemeni civil war has killed around a quarter of a million people. Yemeni coffee is also subject to the same 10 percent U.S. import tariff applied to coffee from other origins, NPR noted, alongside additional tariffs on Chinese paper cups and Indian cardamom that affect operating costs.Coffee entrepreneur Mokhtar Alkhanshali of Port of Mokha offered a longer perspective on the movement’s timeline. “The Yemeni cafe movement is very, very new,” Alkhanshali told NPR. Alhasbani, announcing the Philadelphia opening, said: “We’re gonna make big difference in the Philadelphia market… Yemeni coffee brings people together from different backgrounds to one place.”The same May 2026 edition of Daily Coffee News also reported a separate development in U.S. café labor practices: Take Care, a coffee shop in Kansas City, Missouri, reversed its no-tipping policy after 18 months of operation, according to the Kansas City Star. Co-owner Christopher Oppenhuis said the shift “helped staff earn more while easing pressure on menu prices” and noted that Take Care had not raised its prices more than once in its two and a half years of operation. “We don’t call it a living wage; we just call it a consistent wage,” Oppenhuis told the Kansas City Star. A commentator identified as Waiser observed in the same publication that “there have been a number of restaurants here in the U.S. that have tried to get rid of tipping… very few of them have succeeded.”
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