Built on thirty years of hospitality and an obsession with the perfect cup.

Some businesses start with a business plan. Mine started with the smell of fresh coffee on Wacker Drive.

In the mid-to-late nineties, my dad and his cousin flew to New York to earn their certification from Gloria Jean's Coffee, then came back to Chicago and opened one of the city's first specialty coffee shops, right on Wacker. I was a kid when I first walked through those doors. I didn't know what specialty coffee was. I just knew coffee meant something in my family. It carried our Syrian and Jordanian tradition of welcoming people into an experience, not just a room.

That never left me.

Family Album

Three generations behind the counter.

Where it started — Wacker Drive, late ’90s

Years later, with a Breville Bambino on my counter as a wedding gift, I found myself chasing that feeling again. I made bad coffee for longer than I'd like to admit, then kept refining, shot after shot, until what came out of the machine wasn't just caffeine. It was a moment.

The idea crystallized at a community bazaar. My wife and I watched a simple matcha cart draw a line out the door, looked at each other, and knew. If someone could build that kind of moment around a single drink, imagine what we could do with years of espresso craft behind us. I loved the thought of putting real equipment in front of people and serving them the way my family taught me. Citrus & Olive was born.