A new coffee shop has opened on McKinney’s western border, pouring Sanaani coffee, Qishr and Adeni tea alongside espresso drinks and smoothies. Arwa Yemeni Coffee began a soft opening in late October and has been serving customers at 1935 Prestwick Hollow Drive, Suite 900, ever since.
The shop’s arrival was confirmed in a report from Community Impact Newspaper, which first detailed plans for the location back in September. That earlier report described a menu built around traditional Yemeni coffee and tea, including Sanaani coffee, Qishr, Mofawer, Jubani and Adeni tea, alongside newer additions like a date matcha latte and a sand dune latte. Classic espresso drinks and smoothies round out the lineup for customers who want something closer to a typical coffee-shop order.
The beans themselves come from Yemen’s Haraz region, prized for fruity, floral and chocolate flavor notes, per the same report. That sourcing echoes what regulars have come to expect from Arwa’s original Richardson shop, where coffee beans are imported from Yemen, according to a separate Community Impact account of the Richardson location at 888 S. Greenville Ave., Suite 223. The location once had an on-site roasting machine, but the company later shifted to centralized commercial roasting.
Six Friends Behind the Counter
Arwa Yemeni Coffee’s McKinney shop is owned by six friends: Oshin Ahmed, Sufi Al Ahmed, Sushmita Biswas, Alvi Sakib, Aniqa Jannath and Ahnaf Hassan. The group frequented Arwa’s Richardson location for years before deciding to bring the brand west, a connection that helps explain why the new shop leans so heavily on the flavors and rituals of that original spot.
Co-owner Oshin Ahmed described the shop as something beyond a place to grab a drink. “Arwa offers an experience where coffee, culture and community come together,” Ahmed said, according to the report. Ahmed also said the hope is that customers come for the coffee and stay because they feel like they belong.
That sense of ritual has long been part of Arwa’s identity. At the Richardson location, the menu includes a Yemeni latte built on a house-made spice blend, and the space itself features jelsa, the traditional Arabic floor seating made with a cushion base and seat back, according to Eater Dallas. That Richardson shop is co-owned by Susan Shihab, her husband Yazan Soofi, and her sister-in-law Nora Soofi, separate from the ownership group now running the McKinney location.
Grand Opening Set for Saturday
Arwa Yemeni Coffee will hold a grand opening event from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday, with live music, face painting, henna, a photo booth, vendors and giveaways planned, according to details the business shared in an Instagram post. The celebration arrives even as the shop has already been serving customers for a few weeks, giving McKinney a formal introduction to a spot that’s been quietly building a following since its soft opening.
Part of a Bigger Texas Trend
McKinney’s new shop lands amid a broader surge of Yemeni coffee culture across North Texas. Texas Highways has described Arwa as the first Texas-based franchise in a growing category, noting that competitor Haraz Coffee House has added two new shops in Plano and Irving with nine more locations in the works across Dallas-Fort Worth. The same outlet reported that the Arab American Institute estimates Collin and Dallas counties together have a population of more than 33,000 Arab Americans, a figure that helps explain the appetite for the category.
Arwa itself has been expanding quickly. CultureMap Dallas reported the brand has added 12 locations across Texas since its Richardson debut, with 15 more under construction, including a 3,500-square-foot shop in downtown Arlington featuring its own private jalsa room for communal gathering. Reports differ on exactly when that Richardson flagship first opened, with Community Impact citing December 2022 and CultureMap citing 2023, but there’s no dispute that it became the launching point for a brand now spreading well beyond its original Dallas suburb.
