A cookie-and-soft-serve chain built on 2 a.m. cravings is bringing its late-night menu to Cypress. Midnight Cravingz plans to open a new location at 26321 Northwest Freeway in October, serving warm cookies topped with vanilla soft serve to a stretch of U.S. Highway 290 that recently lost its go-to late-night ice cream spot.
The Cypress storefront will sit in a retail strip center near Fry Road, alongside established neighbors including Shipley Do-Nuts, according to Community Impact. The menu leans into indulgent combinations built for after-hours snacking, including the Dark Knight, which pairs a double chocolate cookie with vanilla soft serve, Nutella, Oreo and chocolate syrup. There's also the Churro, made with a sugar cookie, vanilla soft serve and cinnamon sugar churro cream, plus the simpler Classic, a chocolate chip cookie topped with vanilla soft serve.
Hours will stretch well past typical dessert-shop closing times. The Cypress location is set to run Tuesday through Thursday from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m., Friday and Saturday from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., and Sunday from 6 p.m. to midnight, per the same report. That late-night window has been part of the brand's identity from the start.
From a Spring Kitchen to a Statewide Following
Midnight Cravingz was co-founded by brothers Yousif and Yaser El-Samman along with partner Abdulrahman Mostafa, who launched the concept after craving warm, restaurant-style pizookies late at night, according to the Houston Chronicle. The business began as a late-night pop-up out of a shared commercial incubator kitchen on Sawdust Road in Spring before opening its first standalone storefront on Rayford Road in April 2025, the Chronicle's report notes.
By late 2024, the brand had built an audience of more than 96,000 Instagram followers, largely through viral marketing centered on its 2 a.m. closing time, the outlet reports. That online following translated into real foot traffic once the company started opening physical locations, and it has since pushed into college towns with heavy late-night demand. The Battalion reports that Midnight Cravingz opened locations near Texas A&M University in College Station and near UT Austin along Guadalupe Street and Barton Springs Road, with co-owner Yaser El-Samman describing college towns as a natural next step for the concept.
Filling a Gap Left by a Shuttered Ice Cream Chain
The Cypress opening follows the company's move into central Houston, where it announced a lease along Westheimer Road in the Galleria corridor in September 2025, according to WhatNow. Westheimer is one of Houston's most competitive dining strips, making the Galleria lease a notable marker of the brand's growing footprint before it turned toward the northwest suburbs.
That Cypress expansion arrives just months after Florida-based soft-serve chain Twistee Treat quietly closed its last two Texas locations in Cypress and northwest Houston in July, as Hoodline previously reported. Twistee Treat had once planned to open 40 to 50 locations across the Houston area before winding down its Texas presence, leaving a gap in the late-night ice cream market that Midnight Cravingz now appears positioned to fill.
Growth Along a Booming Commercial Corridor
The site sits in one of the fastest-growing trade areas in the region. Along the Northwest Freeway corridor, the population has surged 21% over three years to nearly 90,000 residents, with an average annual household income of $170,000, according to data from NewQuest Properties. That growth has drawn other investment to the strip as well, including more than $1.2 million in planned renovations for nearby Raising Cane's and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen locations, as reported by My Neighborhood News.
Midnight Cravingz's move into Cypress also fits a broader pattern of late-operating dining concepts pushing into Houston's outer suburbs. Pizza chain Zio Al's and teahouse chain Feng Cha have both expanded into hubs like Cypress and Jersey Village to capture off-hours demand, a trend Hoodline has tracked in its coverage of Zio Al's expansion into Montrose and The Heights and its report on Feng Cha's arrival in Jersey Village. As master-planned communities continue filling in around U.S. 290, kitchens that stay open past 10 p.m. are finding a viable audience where none may have existed a decade ago.
