Qima Cafe

Faris Sheibani, a British Yemeni chemical engineer, founded the trading company Qima Coffee in 2016 after watching the Yemen conflict escalate while he lived comfortably in the UK, a contrast he has called a paradoxical life. His own grandfather started with a tea and coffee shack in Aden at seventeen and built it around the idea that they were makers of lives, not trade, funding schools, roads and clinics alongside the business. Sheibani opened the first Qima cafe in Fitzrovia in 2022 to put that same vision in front of the public, then followed with this larger Covent Garden flagship in 2025.

The company now sources directly from thousands of smallholder farmers across Yemen, Colombia and Ecuador, cutting out the usual middlemen so more value reaches the growers. Rare lots like ancient hillside Yemenia and Andean Sidra Wush Wush run largely through an exclusive pour over menu, alongside two drinks built on the whole coffee fruit rather than just the bean, a qishr latte from Yemeni coffee cherry husk tea and a cascara fizz from the cherry pulp itself. A tree planted for a farmer with every cup sold ties the counter directly back to the sourcing story.