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As coffee behemoth Starbucks closes hundreds of stores, a different type of coffee shop is rapidly expanding: Middle Eastern-style cafes. Along one mile-long stretch of Kedzie Avenue in Albany Park and North Park, near a Starbucks that closed in September, four separate Middle Eastern coffee shops have opened in the past year, offering light-roasted coffees brewed with spices, desserts featuring nuts and honey, strong teas, and, of course, colorful, social media-ready lattes and refreshers.
Two of the new cafes are the first Chicago outposts of quickly growing Yemeni coffee chains with their roots in the Middle Eastern enclave of Dearborn, Michigan, outside Detroit. Qamaria first came to the Chicago area with a shop in the southwest suburb of Chicago Ridge, near Bridgeview, a locus of the Arabic community in Chicago. Qamaria now has locations in Bridgeview, Aurora, Lombard, and most recently, in a strip mall at 4728 N. Kedzie Ave. in Albany Park, amidst a number of Middle Eastern businesses. Shibam’s beachhead in the Chicago area was Glendale Heights; it has now also entered the city in a strip mall at 5241 N. Kedzie Ave…