A coffee shop in Pembroke Pines is importing its beans directly from Yemen and building a menu around pastries you will not find at the chain down the street, including chocolate purses the shop says nobody else is making. Haraz Coffee House has planted itself on Pines Boulevard with a pitch that blends centuries-old coffee tradition with a bakery case full of experiments dreamed up in-house.
Beans Imported Straight From Yemen
Ayaan Malik described the shop as a specialty coffee house that imports its beans from Yemen and offers something new and unique, according to WSVN. “We’re a specialty coffee shop that imports our beans from Yemen,” Malik said, per the station's report. That sourcing ties back to a country widely considered the birthplace of coffee, which continues to support small growers, many of whom export beans to relatives running cafes in the United States, according to Axios.
Customers expecting a mellow cup should brace themselves. Malik said the coffee is stronger than what people in the area are typically used to, the same report notes. He also said people often compare it to Cuban coffee, though he admitted he has never actually tried Cuban coffee himself.
Crunchy Fruit Pastries, Teddy Bears and the Shop's New Chocolate Purses
Beyond the coffee, Haraz has built a reputation around a trio of oddly named desserts: crunchy fruit pastries, crunchy teddy bears and, most recently, crunchy purses. Malik said the fruit pastries are very popular, with the teddy bears and the newly introduced purses rounding out the lineup, per the same account. The fruit pastries get their look from an outer layer of colored white chocolate wrapped around a mousse interior, he explained, while the teddy bears come filled with that same mousse.
Malik told the station he came up with the fruit pastry after searching for nearby sellers and coming up empty. “Nobody had it close by, so then I talked to my dad,” he said, and the two worked out a recipe together. The newer crunchy purses are made of chocolate too, but with a thicker shell than the other items simply because the purses themselves are bigger. Malik said Haraz was the first to offer them, though that claim comes from the shop itself and has not been independently verified elsewhere.
Matcha, Lattes and a Favorite Slice of Cake
The menu is not limited to Yemeni specialties. Customers can also order matcha, lattes and cake, Malik said, and he singled out the shop's mango tiramisu as a personal favorite. Haraz Coffee House's own materials describe a broader mission to share the heritage of Yemeni coffee with the world while sourcing beans from Yemen and honoring traditional craftsmanship, according to WhatNow.
Part of a Fast-Growing Yemeni Coffee Scene
The Pembroke Pines shop is riding a broader wave. The number of Yemeni-American coffee shops rose 50 percent last year, according to Technomic figures cited by Axios. In South Florida specifically, Haute Coffee already operates in Davie and Southwest Ranches, while Haraz opened its Pembroke Pines doors in March and has another location planned near Florida International University by the end of September, Axios reported.
Nationally, the picture is similar. Yemeni coffeehouses are opening at a rapid pace across the country, including in areas without large Arab American populations, the Los Angeles Times reported, noting that the number of cafes run by six major Yemeni-style chains grew 50 percent to 136 locations in the prior year. The U.S. Arab American population grew nearly 43 percent. Haraz founder Hamzah Nasser, who opened the first Haraz Coffee House in Dearborn, Michigan, in 2021, has said he expects Yemeni cafes to become as common nationwide as Starbucks by 2030, according to Axios.
Exactly how big the chain has already grown is harder to pin down. Haraz's own website states at one point that it has expanded to 20 locations across metro Detroit and other cities with 142 more in the pipeline, while another page on the same site puts the total at 62 locations with 185 additional ones planned; the Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, described it as a 50-outlet chain with 50 more in development. The company has not reconciled those figures publicly.
