Another coffee shop serving traditional Arabic drinks, espresso, lattes and light bites has opened in Skokie, and this time it’s part of a franchise with operations in seven states.
The halal coffee shop MOTW, which stands for Muslims of the World, is located at 9406 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, and is open until 10 p.m. Mondays through Sundays and until midnight on Friday and Saturday, as is the custom for typical Arabic coffee shops, according to co-owner Fahad Zuberi.
The coffee shop is also a part of a greater goal the family-owned business has to build bridges in the Muslim community in alignment with their nonprofit group MOTW.
The business, much like the nonprofit, has a goal to bring people together, Fahad Zuberi said. “What’s a better place than a coffee shop, right? Coffee is something that everybody kind of can relate over in many ways,” he said.
According to MOTW’s website, the nonprofit began with an Instagram page when anti-Muslim sentiments were alarmingly high in 2014, according to MOTW’s founder Sajjad Shah. The mission was “to illuminate the lives of Muslim individuals through their own stories.”
The mission then led to donation drives to areas in the Middle East that need aid, according to Saad Zuberi, Fahad Zuberi’s brother. The drives allowed MOTW to bring in aid and shelter to people in Yemen, Ethiopia and Gaza, according to its website.
In hopes of cementing a place for Muslims to congregate, and for non-Muslims to better know them, Shah’s next plan was to open coffee shops to further spread their message. The first coffee shops opened in Indiana. The Chicago area has one in Naperville, another in Lombard, the Skokie shop and another that opened Saturday, July 26, in Palatine.
MOTW joins other Arabic-style coffee shops in the northern suburbs, including Qahweh, Matari Coffee, and Sweet Reserve Cafe and Bakery in Skokie and Haraz Coffee in Niles.
Fahad Zuberi contends that he doesn’t see other shops as competing rivals, though, even given their close proximity to each other. If anything, he says that they all help each other by being visible, and in some cases even have family ties to one another.
Fahad Zuberi also said the increase of coffee shops is growing a trend in the Muslim community as young men start to veer away from hookah bars to coffee to socialize.
“Coffee is a clean business,” he said, and parents can feel comfortable if their children decide to go out for a cup of joe instead of inhaling smoke.
While neither co-owners Ovais Zuberi or Fahad Zuberi had backgrounds in coffee, the two have business backgrounds and business degrees from DePaul University, Fahad Zuberi said. Fahad Zuberi said his business background includes an online Tik Tok shop named Snack’d, which sells viral food items such as dalgona cookies, popularized by the Netflix program “Squid Games,” and Dubai chocolate.
The switch to coffee was after seeing the booming business of Yemeni and Muslim coffee shops in Lombard, Fahad Zuberi said. MOTW’s first Illinois store was in Lombard, and the store’s product and message was relatable, which enticed him to open his own franchise of the coffee shop.
“Somebody had already done the hard work for us,” Fahad Zuberi said of opening the franchise instead of starting a store from scratch. From his previous ventures, he raised money to pay MOTW $75,000 to open the Skokie location. In total, he and Ovais Zuberi spent $425,000 to open the coffee shop.
The additional $350,000 went towards construction costs and materials in building out the interior of the shop, kitchen and coffee-making equipment, deposit and first month’s rent, furniture and decor, signage, marketing, permit fees and more.
Alina Zuberi, Fahad Zuberi’s cousin, manages the coffee shop. She said the transition to open the shop has stabilized.
The three recommend that first time customers try out the Spanish latte, similar to an horchata latte, and empanadas. With sweet and savory fillings, the empanadas sold at the coffee shop are filled with butter chicken, spinach, Philly cheese steak, guava and cheese and apple.
