From NYC to AZ:
Food-cart business planning storefronts throughout Arizona
The Halal Guys, a network of street carts selling Middle Eastern-inspired fare on Manhattan street corners, soon will launch brick-andmortar stores all over Arizona as part of an international rollout.
Shake Shack? Whatever. It’s a burger.
The fast-casual choice of New York pedestrians is a little less pedestrian.
The Halal Guys, a network of street carts selling Middle Eastern-inspired fare on Manhattan street corners for more than two decades, soon will launch brick-and-mortar stores all over Arizona as part of an international rollout.
An investment group led by CEO AJ Ahmad has acquired the franchise rights for the state, and plans to open 15 Arizona locations over the next five years, The Republic has learned.
The first, scheduled to open in late December or early January, will take over the former Arizona State University bookstore at 1015 S. Rural Road in Tempe, where throngs of Halal Guys fans would seem inevitable.
“The Halal Guys opportunity came about, and I fought tooth and nail to get that contract,” said Ahmad, who also owns two Edible Arrangements franchises in the Valley.
The Halal Guys offer chicken, gyros and falafel in platter and sandwich form, but their iconic dish is the chicken platter. Marinated, chopped and griddled to a light crisp, the chicken is served over seasoned rice with toasted pita bread, chopped iceberg lettuce and tomato, and doused with two sauces:
A tangy white concoction that resembles zabadi, the Egyptian version of Greek tzatziki.
And a red sauce similar to harissa, the fiery North African chile paste.
It’s an immensely popular bit of ArabAmerican fusion that has largely supplanted the dirty water dog as New York City’s street food of choice. And in recent years, it has taken on a certain cult cachet among the nation’s food geeks.
While The Halal Guys aren’t the first or only purveyors of the modern classic, they’re by far the most successful. Popular among cab drivers looking for a quick, filling mid-shift meal that conformed to Islamic dietary laws, New York’s “halal carts” quickly achieved crossover success. The Halal Guys, founded by three Egyptian immigrants in 1990, expanded from a single cart to a network that dots the Manhattan landscape, then inked a deal in 2014 with Fransmart, best known for turning Five Guys and Qdoba into national chains.
Rapid growth and preparations for an international rollout have brought with them a brash new logo and a transition from squeeze bottles to branded sauce packets. But the ubiquitous lines on Manhattan sidewalks would indicate their hometown support has not waned in the wake of The Halal Guys’ expansion.
Whether their iconic brand of street meat can successfully make the transition from the sidewalks of New York to the strip malls of Phoenix remains to be seen. But we’ll soon find out.
A “Palestinian-blooded” Jordanian national who was born and raised in Abu Dhabi, Ahmad currently makes his home in Southern California. But when he first came to the United States in 1993, he spent seven years in Tempe, learning the English language and studying electrical engineering at Arizona State Uni-
versity. When he acquired the rights to open a Halal Guys restaurant in Arizona, there was no question where he intended to plant his flag.
“The building used to be an ASU bookstore,” Ahmad said. “I bought books so many times from it when I was a student, and now I’m opening a restaurant inside it.”
Ahmad and his partners won’t be stopping there. Plans are underway for Gilbert, Scottsdale, Tucson and two locations in Phoenix. But the first branch will carry special significance for Ahmad.
“We’re going to be in the heart of Tempe, and I don’t care where we open after that as long as my flagship store is in Tempe. That’s my home.”