Barbar Brand Guidelines: The Hamra Man’ousheh Bakery That Grew Into a Chain Since 1979

A man’ousheh oven facing the Piccadilly theatre.

Barbar is a Beirut restaurant business that began in 1979 as a small man’ousheh bakery in the Hamra area of Beirut. The company says it was founded by Mohammad Ghaziri, a Beiruti, and that the first shop opened facing the Piccadilly theatre. The hospitality trade magazine Hotel & Catering gave the same founder, year and location in March 2021, and Hospitality News Middle East described the business in July 2022 as having started as a small bakery on Hamra Street.

Man’ousheh is the Levantine flatbread baked with a topping, and it was the bakery’s first product. The company names thyme and minced-meat versions, and says the one that made its name was topped with melting akkawi cheese and sesame seeds. Hotel & Catering wrote that within the first few years the shop was frequented by singers, artists and celebrities who performed at the Piccadilly, a point the company also makes on its own history page, where it shows a photograph of the founder with his brother Ibrahim Ghaziri dated 1980.

The menu then widened step by step. According to the company’s timeline, shawarma, broasted chicken and the hamburger arrived in 1986; a fruit-cocktail and ice-cream shop followed in 1988; falafel in 1993; barbecue grills in 1997; and a wider range of sandwiches in 1999. Hotel & Catering described the result as a family business built up over the years, adding shawarma, falafel, fatayer, grills, burgers, ice creams and fruit cocktails to the original bakery.

In 2001 a second Beirut branch, Barbar Spears, opened on Spears Street in Ras Beirut, the company says.

Open day and night.

Barbar’s identity in Beirut rests on two things: the breadth of its menu and its hours. The company says it has run around the clock, seven days a week, for more than four decades, and its branch list, as of November 2026, gives both Beirut branches, Hamra on Piccadilly Street and Spears on Spears Street, as open 24 hours a day. Hotel & Catering also reported in 2021 that the restaurant stayed open around the clock.

The menu headings on the company’s website show how far the bakery has travelled: breakfast, man’ousheh, pizza, salad, mezza, broasted chicken, falafel, barbecue, shawarma, hamburgers, sandwiches, juices, fruit cocktails and ice cream. In a single business, that gathers most of the Lebanese street-food counter, from the morning flatbread to the late-night sandwich, and the company describes its customers as people from every part of city life, including night-time crowds.

Hospitality News Middle East said in July 2022 that Barbar had established itself in the Lebanese market for more than forty years after starting out as a small bakery, and that the founder saw the Gulf openings as a way for Lebanese diners abroad and other residents to find the same flavours.

The company presents itself in both of its languages. Its website title sets the Latin and Arabic names together, as “BARBAR || بربر,” and its pages carry the founding year, 1979, as a mark of age. For a brand whose first product was a flatbread from a neighbourhood oven, that bilingual name, a long menu and a fixed street corner make up most of the visual story.

Chicken, bread and the grill.

The fast-food chains of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon include several that began as a single restaurant in one city. ALBAIK dates itself to a Jeddah chicken shop opened in 1974 and took its present name in 1986; Kudu opened its first sandwich counter in Riyadh in April 1988. Their histories are told in two places: the companies’ own “our story” pages, and the business press of the Gulf and beyond.

What the companies publish about themselves is often bilingual: ALBAIK’s and Kudu’s websites, for example, run in English and Arabic, with the name set in Latin capitals. Menus are presented by named dishes and meals rather than by price lists: fried-chicken meals and garlic sauce, made-to-order sandwiches and burgers, shawarma wraps, falafel, man’oushe flatbreads and mixed grills, depending on the chain. Open kitchens, drive-throughs, food-court counters and petrol-station units appear as formats in their own right.

Restaurant networks are often counted by the companies themselves, so the numbers change with the date of the page. Expansion abroad often runs through partners: ALBAIK entered the UAE in 2021 with an Abu Dhabi operator, and Kudu opened its first franchise outside Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in 2026. Ownership can change too: Kudu passed from family ownership to private-equity investors in 2015 and to a regional investment group in 2022.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each chain — who founded it, who owns it, where it trades and which dishes it names — and attributes what rests only on the company’s word. The palettes and typefaces shown are unofficial interpretations, and no logo, sign or packaging is reproduced.

From Hamra to the Gulf.

Barbar left Lebanon through a franchise. In March 2021 Hotel & Catering reported that Kitch, a delivery-focused operator of cloud kitchens and store-front restaurants, had signed a franchise agreement with Barbar to take the brand into the Gulf. The first Barbar in the Gulf states was a 600-square-metre restaurant on Hessa Street in Dubai, offering both dine-in and delivery, the magazine reported.

The magazine described Kitch as a hybrid operator, set up by Fahad Alhokair and Walid Hajj, that runs store-front restaurants alongside cloud kitchens, and said Barbar’s menu would be served through both formats in the Gulf.

A second Dubai branch followed in 2022. Hospitality News Middle East reported in July 2022 that Barbar had opened at Bay Avenue, a two-storey retail promenade near the Executive Towers in Business Bay, less than a year after the Hessa Street opening, and quoted the founder on the brand’s move from its beginnings in Beirut to Dubai.

As of November 2026, the company’s branch list names six restaurants: Hamra and Spears in Beirut; Hessa Street in Al Barsha and Bay Avenue in Business Bay, Dubai; Tahlia Street in the Olaya district of Riyadh; and a branch at The Drive by Waterway in the Fifth Settlement of New Cairo, Egypt. The two Beirut branches and the Hessa Street and Riyadh branches are listed as open around the clock. The company’s site also invites franchise and partnership proposals.

For a design guide, Barbar shows how a single neighbourhood bakery can turn its corner, its hours and its long menu into a brand that travels, keeping the founding year and the Arabic name in view. Compare Zaatar w Zeit, another chain from Beirut, and Kababji, a Lebanese grill chain with Beirut roots. For this guide we use midnight ink, a warm red, za’atar green, sesame gold and an akkawi white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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