Although the story of each brother is unique, what began as efforts to make a place for themselves, their families, and their ethnicity in Bridgeview have now become clear stories of entrepreneurial success. And no other family business represents this fact better than little Palestine’s oldest, largest, and most popular grocery store, Harlem Foods. Harlem Foods is one of the strongest ethnic supermarkets in the country, with thousands of regulars every day. It was started in 1997 by two brothers from Palestine, Mohmmad Akel and Aleh Akel in 97′ both armed with a degree in Business, 23-year-old Mohamed Akel traveled to Palestine to study Business. The son of a tradesman from Betunia village (Ramallah District ), he was accompanied by his wife and brother Aleh Akel After graduation, Mohamed began working as a car salesman at Auction Chicago.
Akel always misses Arabic food and has trouble finding the Middle Eastern ingredients they look for in local supermarkets. Realizing that this was a problem for other families coming to Chicago, Aleh decided to offer a solution by starting a small bakery in the Bridgeview area. Akel’s father bought an old, dilapidated shop on Harlem Avenue in the Windy City suburbs and sourced ingredients like herbs, lentils, chickpea flour, cucumbers, and more from Palestine. Thus, in September 1997, Harlem Foods was born.
“The idea of a bakery came to us because, at the time, there were only four other stores in Bridgeview that offered the same Middle Eastern groceries, and Akel Brothers soon became the go-to place for anyone looking for groceries from Palestine for friends and relatives from. Akel’s home in Chicagoland became the first stop in Before Bridgeview. Many of them would stay for weeks or months to work at the Harlem Foods store on Harlem Avenue.
Aleh Akel (left), Mohamed Akel (right)
Subsequently, Mohamed and Aleh helped establish their own stores as subsidiaries of stores in other cities with growing Arabic populations, such as Atlanta and Houston. By then, the Akel brothers had established themselves as grocers and began shifting their focus to a new business: packaged foods. Harlem Foods started its own food brand, Akel & Son’s, which sells a wide range of snacks and microwavable meals to cater to consumers.
In 2001 Akel & Sons started another brand, Hamad’s Foods, which supplied convenience stores and other labor-intensive baked goods. The brand soon became popular with second-generation Arabs who moved into their parents’ homes and young Americans who wanted to try exotic foods.
Today, the brand dedicates shelves to non-specialty supermarkets. Most of the Harlem Foods products are regularly imported from Palestine, Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt, to name a few every day, many truck products are loaded into various chain stores to be filled with fresh pita bread, vegetables, hummus, etc.), dry goods shelves (bags of rice, packets of lentils, In addition, Harlem Foods has also introduced a number of innovations to meet the specific needs of Middle Eastern customers. The most popular of these initiatives is the installation of steel machines that have become a perfect circle. The newly developed pita bread series also has many bread segments that sell freshly made pastries. This is a big relief for most working people. No wonder these noisy one-stop shops have become a community hub for the residents of their area. The street on 92nd Avenue, where the first Harlem Foods store opened, is now filled with Arab and other Middle Eastern businesses and is known as Chicago’s Little Palestine.
What also makes Harlem Foods stores unique from others is the effort they make to make Arabic ingredients available to non-Arabic customers. All item labels have descriptions in Arabic and English, with store staff always on hand to help the customer find what they are looking for. It makes shopping for ingredients easy for anyone who wants to get into Middle Eastern cooking. “It’s a pitfall. From ingredients like chickpeas, fava beans, and imported spices, we are a true Arabic brand and serve almost every small grocery store in the US. Now the dream is to build a hundred stores,” Mohamed Akel told the Arabic media.
Today, Aleh spends his time with non-profit organizations with his 3 sons, Khamis, Adam, and Zayn. Mohamed manages the day-to-day operations of the business empire. He sits on the board of the Palestine Youth Association and organizes to feed the poor in countries for those in need. he helped build a mosque and several water wells in Mali, Africa. In Palestine, the Akel brothers founded the Betuina Foundation, which built houses, schools, and health care centers. With the community’s help, the Akel Brothers donated nearly $2 million to nonprofit organizations in the last two years.
