A specialty coffee brand known for its Yemeni chai and its charitable roots is planting its flag in downtown Boston. MOTW Coffee & Pastries plans to open a new café at 45 Broad Street in the Financial District, near Quincy Market, with an opening targeted for mid-October 2026.
The Financial District location will be the third MOTW café in Greater Boston, joining existing shops in Shrewsbury and Quincy, according to WhatNow. Franchise owners Kader Kapadia and Salwa Zakaria, who will operate the new spot, first brought the brand to Massachusetts in mid-July 2024 when they opened MOTW’s original Bay State location at MarketPlace Shrewsbury on Maple Avenue, per HBH Skyline. Both owners hold full-time careers in healthcare IT alongside running their coffee franchises, the outlet notes.
The move downtown, the WhatNow report states, came at the urging of Shrewsbury regulars who asked Kapadia and Zakaria to bring MOTW closer to Boston proper. Kapadia said the Financial District location is deeply personal to him and his wife, and that the new café reflects both a personal connection and community demand, adding that it will create local job opportunities and a welcoming community hub.
A Historic Printing Building Gets a New Tenant
The café is taking over a 1,534-square-foot commercial space at 45 Broad Street, according to a Common Victualler License application (License #LB-632195) reviewed by the Boston Licensing Board during a virtual transactional hearing on August 5, filed under the entity name Kaparia Cafe Boston, Inc., per Boston.gov public notices. The building itself dates to 1894 and was converted from Class B office space into an 11-unit mixed-use residential property, according to PRINCIPLE. The ground-floor retail space previously housed a Starbucks.
Construction on the new café is nearing completion, per the same WhatNow report, and the finished shop will include murals and other design touches. Seating will accommodate 23 guests, with high-speed WiFi for the laptop crowd that tends to populate Financial District coffee shops during the workday.
Chai, Empanadas, and a Growing Regional Footprint
The menu will lean on MOTW’s now-familiar staples: signature Yemeni chai, specialty lattes, and matcha, alongside pastries including tiramisu, tres leches, and empanadas. Kapadia and Zakaria are also developing new menu items specifically for the Financial District location, WhatNow reports. The Yemeni chai is described as a secret family recipe associated with Fatimah Shah, wife of MOTW founder Sajjad Shah, and the brand’s espresso is small-batch roasted by Indianapolis-based roaster Hubbard & Cravens, according to Indianapolis Monthly.
Greater Boston’s second MOTW storefront opened in February at 279 Willard Street in Quincy, operated by the Javid family and selected in part to serve South Shore residents and commuters. The Financial District opening comes as MOTW now counts 24 locations and counting. Hoodline previously covered the brand’s Missouri debut in the Delmar Loop.
From a 2014 Instagram Page to a Nonprofit Retail Arm
MOTW stands for Muslims of the World, and the brand traces back to an Instagram page Sajjad Shah founded in 2014 to share personal stories, individual experiences, and shared humanity. That digital storytelling project led to a book deal, resulting in the 224-page “Muslims of the World: Portraits and Stories of Hope, Survival, Loss, and Love,” published by Abrams Image on October 9, 2018. The MOTW community now includes more than 700,000 people worldwide.
Shah and his wife Fatimah opened the first physical MOTW café in 2021 in Indianapolis’s International Marketplace District, conceived as a complement to the brand’s already massive social media following. The Muslims of the World organization has since become a nonprofit, and MOTW Coffee & Pastries serves as its retail arm, continuing humanitarian work around the world. Shah has said the organization has raised millions of dollars for humanitarian causes overall.
The organization has also supported disaster relief in Yemen and Ethiopia, funded cataract surgeries, delivered clean drinking water, and provided medical care. MOTW cafés also frequently stay open late into the evening on weekends, functioning as sober, alcohol-free gathering spaces for patrons looking for nightlife alternatives, per Indianapolis Monthly. With murals on the walls and chai on the menu, the Financial District location is being positioned as a community third space for downtown Boston, joining the brand’s Shrewsbury and Quincy outposts as it works toward opening in mid-October.
