OUR FOUNDER OF THE WEEK- Every Tuesday, Founder of the Week looks at how a successful member of Egypt’s startup community got their big break, asks about their experiences running a business, and gets their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Omar Abdalla (LinkedIn), co-founder and CEO of Brown Nose Coffee.

My name is Omar Abdalla and I am the co-founder and CEO of Brown Nose Coffee, a specialty coffee roaster and cafe based out of Cairo. We source, roast, and brew our own coffee from the best ingredients we can find, putting quality and people first.

It all started five or six years after graduation. I graduated in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing from John Molson School of Business in Montreal, Canada — then I came back home to figure out what I wanted to do. At first, I spent some time working in PR and marketing, then I ended up working in contracting, and spending some time in the family business after that. But I didn't find myself in any of these fields and started to think about starting my own business.

But Brown Nose wasn't really supposed to be a business. It started off by hosting a small coffee community in one of my co-founder's houses in Maadi. We organized it through a Facebook group that we called ‘Apple pie and Coffee’ where we just served apple pie and coffee. We would invite coffee enthusiasts to try different types of coffee that we would get from abroad and test out different brewing methods.

It was a hobby, a passion, and something we loved doing. As four friends from school that were a part of that community, eventually Medhat Hassanein, Taymour Sabry, Serag Meneassy and I came together and decided to try and elevate the coffee culture in Egypt through Brown Nose.

We actually started off as a B2B company. In our early days, we would import, roast, and sell coffee to different cafes, restaurants and hotels. Soon after, we were offered the chance to open a small coffee truck in Hacienda White at the North Coast, and the feedback we got from the customers was incredible.

We realized we had the chance to become one of the first specialty coffee roasters in Egypt. During that time, all the available coffee in Egypt was imported, and the only local roasters in the country focused on traditional Arabic or Turkish coffee. There was a lot of reliance on foreign brands, with the coffee being imported already roasted, meaning it had been traveling for 3-4 months before sitting on shelves for another six. So by the time it was brewed, the beans had already lost their freshness.

It took us almost three years of research before launching. We made sure to get all the proper training and certifications on how to source and roast the beans, and taste — or, to use the correct terminology for a professional cup — coffee. We also wanted to introduce new roasts to the market. Most of the beans being used were dark roasted, and everyone was overlooking medium and light roasts that actually retained their natural flavors.

I think our branding is also a very big differentiator. We could see early on that most specialty coffee brands, both regionally and globally, took a very industrial approach to their branding and their architecture. That didn’t match our community-based vision or our personalities, and it was a good way to stand out. That’s where we came up with Mr. Mots, our mascot — an acronym for Medhat, Omar, Taymour and Serag.

The idea of coffee fostering a community is still important to us, and we want to grow it through weekly workshops that teach people about coffee, so that they can appreciate their favorite drink a little more and brew better coffee at home.

Not a lot of people know what our name means. It’s playfully rooted in the experiences of coffee professionals during coffee cupping, a process where they assess the quality of different coffees by smelling the aroma and fragrance. In our early days of cupping, we would get so close to the coffee that we sometimes ended up with coffee on our noses, leading to the inside joke of having a “brown nose.”

The recent economic conditions have created a fair share of challenges along the way, so we’re lucky to have our own coffee supply chain. The biggest issue facing the industry is supply chain issues — a lot of our products rely on imported ingredients, and with import restrictions and price fluctuations, it's very hard to keep our supply chain locked in. But we try to do our best to find or develop local alternatives that are still aligned with our quality standards, and to make sure that we have at least a six-month supply of coffee in our warehouse.

But we have plans for growth, with an aggressive expansion plan to cover all major parts of Egypt before the end of 2025. But ultimately, we hope to see Brown Nose grow beyond Egypt's borders. We want Brown Nose to become one of the few Egyptian brands within international reach — the GCC and Europe are first on our radar.

One of the ways we plan to do this is through brand engagement. Another thing we’re also eyeing is fulfilling customers’ dietary needs. We want to offer something high-quality that caters to those who are health-conscious or looking for alternatives, especially when it comes to vegetarian options. We already offer milk alternatives, but we want to ensure that whether it's a sandwich, a cake, or any product, those with restrictions won’t feel like they’re missing out on anything.

It’s not necessarily difficult, but since we try to limit our SKUs to avoid complicating in-store operations, we don’t have the luxury of offering four or five new items tailored to dietary restrictions. So, it's about finding that one product to test and hoping it does well.

Aside from work, my favorite thing to do is scuba diving. I started diving in 2014, when my now-wife introduced me to it, and have been doing it regularly ever since. I think Egypt is one of the, if not the top, best countries in the world to dive.

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