Yemeni Coffee Chain Sana'a Cafe Takes Over Old Peet's Spot Near Arden Fair

A storefront that sat empty near Arden Fair Mall since a Peet's Coffee closed there earlier this year is about to get a new tenant with a very different vibe: Sana'a Cafe, a Northern California-founded chain of Yemeni coffee houses, plans to open a location at 1749 Arden Way in early September 2026. The shop will serve traditional Yemeni roasts, espresso, chai, and Adeni tea alongside a dessert menu that includes honeycomb cake, pistachio milk cake, rose milk cake, Turkish delight, and chicken fatayet.

The Arden Arcade cafe will be Sana'a Cafe's third location in the Sacramento area, joining an existing shop in Elk Grove at 9135 W. Stockton Blvd. and a downtown Sacramento storefront at 901 K St., according to the Sacramento Bee. That downtown location itself marked a notable local comeback story: Sana'a Cafe leased the historic 901 K Street storefront, which had sat vacant for more than seven years after Estelle's Patisserie closed in 2016, per a report from WhatNow.

TJ Singh, Sana'a Cafe's director of acquisitions, told the Sacramento Bee that the company wants more presence in the Sacramento area. He said the Arden Way location was a great fit because it sits right by the freeway, and the site is expected to draw plenty of foot traffic. The new cafe is near Arden Fair Mall in Arden Arcade, and it will be open to everyone, from friends looking for a place to gather to college students looking for a place to study.

From Peet's Coffee to a Coffee Lounge

The retail space has coffee-shop roots going back nearly a decade. Peet's Coffee opened the site in April 2017, adding 20 local jobs, before shuttering the location around January, based on reporting from ABC10 and property details compiled by Brandmarch. The storefront sits within Market Square at Arden Fair, a 130,000-square-foot open-air shopping center located directly adjacent to the 1.1-million-square-foot Arden Fair Mall complex, per Brandmarch's listing.

Sana'a Cafe, named after the city of Sana'a in Yemen, is intended as a place where people can relax — visitors are not meant to feel rushed while they're there. The chain describes itself as converting into more of a coffee lounge model, with hours at the Arden Arcade site still to be determined, though Sana'a Cafe typically operates from 6 a.m. to midnight local time and will try to maintain those late hours at the new location.

Part of a Bigger Bay Area and National Wave

Sana'a Cafe began in San Francisco in 2023 and has since opened 16 locations in California, along with one location in Washington. Its growth mirrors a broader Northern California boom: the Bay Area's Yemeni coffee scene expanded from a single shop, Delah Coffee in San Francisco, in 2022 to more than 20 locations across San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Fremont, and Berkeley by mid-2026, according to KQED. Sana'a Cafe has been an active part of that spread, including leasing former Starbucks spots in SF and, more recently, opening a new spot on July 24 at Telegraph Avenue and Dwight Way in Berkeley aimed at late-night crowds near UC Berkeley, as reported by Local News Matters.

The trend extends well beyond California. Technomic industry data show that cafes operated by six major Yemeni-style coffee chains grew 50% in 2023 and 2024 to 136 locations nationwide, according to Newsday. That outlet also points to a 2023 Gallup poll finding that only 54% of U.S. adults reported consuming alcohol, the lowest level recorded in 90 years, which analysts cite as a driver of late-night traffic to alcohol-free coffee lounges. Newsday also notes that the Arab American population grew 43% between 2010 and 2024, far outpacing the 10% national population growth rate over the same period, a shift that has helped fuel demand for cafe concepts like Sana'a's.

Financial results back up the momentum. Nation's Restaurant News reported in July that Michigan-founded Haraz Coffee House posted a 78.5% annual sales increase in 2025, while Qahwah House achieved a 56.5% sales gain, according to Nation's Restaurant News. Sacramento has its own version of this wave taking shape too, with a cardamom-scented newcomer landing in Carmichael and Qisa Coffee, which opened in Curtis Park in 2024 and expanded into North Natomas in late 2026, according to WhatNow's coverage. Against that backdrop, Sana'a Cafe's move into the old Peet's storefront near Arden Fair looks less like filling a vacancy and more like the next step in a strategy of planting late-night, alcohol-free gathering spots along Sacramento's busiest retail corridors.