For Omar Hamam,, the path to business ownership wasn’t linear but it was driven by persistence, family, and a fascination with how things work. Now the founder of the fast-growing Tahini’s restaurant chain and Alex Food Service, Hamam’s story begins far from the bustling kitchens of his London, Ontario-based enterprise.
“I was born in Windsor, Ontario,” said Hamam. “And I went to school in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I’ve been living in London since 2011.”
A graduate of the University of Manitoba with a degree in business, Hamam didn’t initially set out to be a restaurateur. “I was in engineering for about four years and I was almost done.I hated engineering. I wasn’t a good one for sure,” he said. “I always knew I had an admiration for business owners. To me, this is like taking me to a candy shop. I love seeing how a business works and hearing the stories of how people started their business.”
The shift from engineering to business wasn’t just academic. It meant breaking with family tradition. “My dad’s an engineer, a professor at some point. He has his PhD in engineering, and half my family are engineers,” said Hamam. “In Egypt, the mentality is kind of like, okay, you have to have a good profession. You have to be either a doctor or an engineer. I kind of broke the norm in the family there.”
After graduating, Hamam worked briefly in banking and insurance. “The first job I got was Wells Fargo Bank, doing cold calling for consolidating debts. That was horrible. I lasted less than maybe five months.” He moved to Egypt in 2006 and began working in real estate. But it wasn’t long before a craving from his Winnipeg days sparked a business idea.
“Do you know Slurpees?” Hamam asked. “Winnipeg is known to be the Slurpee capital of the world. I used to drink a lot of Slurpees in Winnipeg. When I went to Egypt I thought, what if I started a business doing Slurpees in Egypt?”
That idea led to meetings with Pepsi and Coca-Cola, negotiations for branded equipment from Italy, and a pilot project in a top Cairo movie theatre. “I launched the first Slurpee in Egypt. It was doing great,” said Hamam. But ultimately, the business climate didn’t suit him. “I couldn’t really manage my way in Egypt. A lot of politics, just a different way of doing business.”
He sold the business and returned to Canada, determined to do things his own way. “When I came back, I decided I didn’t want to work for a company anymore. I love business. I want to do something for myself. I was just looking for a business for months.”
That search led to the purchase of a Middle Eastern shawarma restaurant in 2011. It was busy and successful, but Hamam saw a bigger opportunity. “I didn’t think the name was franchisable,” he said. “I read the book Grinding It Out by Ray Kroc from McDonald’s. I thought what if I can do something like that?”
He studied the stories of major brands, McDonald’s, Subway, Wendy’s, and Burger King, and began developing his own concept. “I needed to open another concept and make sure it’s not just a one-off,” said Hamam. “If I was going to use other people’s money, I’d better be able to bet my own money on it.”
That led to the birth of Tahini’s. “I came up with the name Tahini’s and I opened my first location,” he said. “The first six months I was doing very small sales like $600 a day, which is really, really bad.”
But he stuck with it, and by the end of the first year, “I was doing the same numbers as the first restaurant. That was awesome.”
Franchising was always the plan, and Hamam knew it required infrastructure. “The second step is I need to come up with a franchise agreement and an operations manual,” he said. The first franchise was opened in 2020.
He launched Alex Food Service, named after Alexandria, Egypt. “I needed a commissary kitchen to make all the proprietary items,” he explained. “I started going out and approaching restaurants. I got maybe like seven accounts in the first month.”
That dual business model helped support expansion. “Right now, (Alex Food Service) doesn’t just deliver to Tahini’s, but it delivers to a lot of restaurants as well.”
Tahini’s is a unique, category leading quick service restaurant group founded in 2012 and currently operating 60 locations across Canada, in addition to operating Tahini’s Kitchen within select FreshCo locations, a Sobey’s banner, and offering a selection of Tahini’s retail packaged products through select grocers. The brand has been fueled by nearly 2 billion views across all of its social media channels and is preparing for rapid growth across Canada and internationally.
Reflecting on the challenges, Hamam points to the early days as the hardest. “Nobody knows your name. You can’t get real estate because landlords don’t know you. It’s hard to find franchisees.” But persistence paid off. “I never took no for an answer. If you’re a landlord, for example, I can call you a hundred times all day, every day until you say yes.”
Another edge? Marketing. “We had a lot of followers at YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. We went viral. That really helped us with franchisees and having customers before we already opened.”
From Slurpees in Cairo to shawarma in Southern Ontario, Hamam’s journey proves the power of determination, adaptability, and betting on yourself.
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