Qahwah House pauses Toronto expansion as Canada trade tensions unsettle Dearborn businesses

Qahwah House, a Yemeni cafe chain with three branches in Dearborn, Michigan, has paused a planned Toronto opening amid US-Canada trade tensions, its marketing director told the Guardian in a report published on 30 September 2026. The decision matters in a city where Canadian visitors are part of the customer base, although accounts from other Dearborn businesses show that cross-border trade and travel have not changed uniformly.

Mohamed Ahmed, Qahwah House’s marketing director, estimated that Canadian customers account for about 10% of its Dearborn business. The chain has 32 branches across the United States, according to the Guardian. Ahmed said it already had registrations and licensing in place for a Toronto location but was waiting to see whether the move remained feasible after recent changes in the relationship between the two countries.

The uncertainty has affected another purchasing decision. Ahmed said the company had also held off on buying furniture from a Canadian supplier. The Guardian reported that Qahwah House imports and serves coffee exclusively from Yemen; Ahmed described the delayed furniture purchase and Toronto plan as decisions about operating across the US-Canada border.

Why Canadian customers matter to Dearborn cafes

Dearborn sits near the crossing from Windsor, Ontario, where the Guardian said about 25,000 residents are of Arab descent. That proximity has long connected families, workers and customers on both sides of the Detroit River. For Dearborn’s Arab restaurants and cafes, a Canadian visitor may be making a familiar local trip rather than a journey planned around a single purchase.

Khader Masri, who runs Masri Sweets in Dearborn, offered a different account of his own customers. He told the Guardian that five or six Canadian families he knows were still coming, including one from London, Ontario, the previous weekend. His experience shows why a regional decline in visitors cannot be assumed to describe every shop’s trade.

Dearborn’s chamber of commerce told the Guardian it had received no reports of businesses struggling because fewer Canadians were visiting. The report also said some restaurant owners did not track where their customers came from, while others declined to comment. Those gaps leave no reliable citywide count of Canadian customers or measure of lost revenue for the businesses interviewed.

What the trade measures and visitor figures show

The US trade representative said President Donald Trump imposed additional 50% tariffs on nearly $20 billion in Canadian imports on 20 July, with the measures set to take effect 30 days later. The administration described the action as a response to Canadian measures affecting US exports. The Guardian reported that Ottawa’s reciprocal tariffs took effect on 8 September and that talks the previous month had failed to resolve differences.

The tariff announcement establishes the policy backdrop to Qahwah House’s decision, but it does not establish a tariff bill for the chain or show that a particular tariff made its Toronto branch unviable. Ahmed attributed the pause to uncertainty and said the company would assess whether expansion was feasible. No opening date or estimate of the cost of the delay was provided in the Guardian’s account.

Brett McWethy of Visit Detroit told the Guardian that Canadian visitation to the Detroit region had fallen about 30% since early 2025 and remained at that level. That regional figure is wider than Dearborn, and the report did not isolate how much of the decline resulted from tariffs. Ahmed, for his part, said he believed Canadians would continue to visit the United States for work and leisure despite political friction.

Michigan restaurants were under pressure even before the latest tariff measures. In a survey fielded on 23–25 April about March business conditions, the Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association found that 51% of the state’s operators reported a decline in sales at existing locations, against 39% nationally. Lower customer traffic was reported by 55% in Michigan and 46% nationally.

The association identified food costs, labour costs and the economy among operators’ leading challenges. Its statewide results provide context for the difficult conditions restaurants face, but they cannot identify the cause of a particular Dearborn cafe’s decisions or measure the effect of Canadian travel on Arab American businesses. For now, the clearest documented change at Qahwah House is its decision to wait before opening in Toronto and buying from a Canadian supplier.