With success bubbling in Chicago, Palestinian-owned ice cream joint eyes expansion

The following was originally published in Palestine in America’s print Food Edition. Please consider subscribing or purchasing individual individual print and or digital copies.

As I walked around the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago to interview the owners of Eiffel Waffle, I passed by many small empty boxes on the ground that once contained sugary waffle cones and ice cream. While I do not condone the act of littering, the fact that dozens of these cardboard containers lay around the surrounding area indicated that the business had quickly become a neighborhood staple since it opened in March.

Led by co-owners Omar Falaneh, Yahya Ghouleh, and Barra Abousalem, Eiffel Waffle is a proudly Palestinian-owned dessert shop that specializes in serving massive scoops of ice cream in their signature bubble waffle cones. The trio of childhood friends, now in their mid 20s, grew up sharing a common vision of someday opening a business together. In the midst of the pandemic’s early stages, that vision began to take shape in the form of waffle cones. After nine months of trial and error perfecting the formula for their waffles, the momentum for their business flowed naturally.

“We ran into these bubble waffle cones on vacation, but it wasn’t like our concept, it was more of like a breakfast type of meal,” says Falaneh. “If you take a look at our waffle, it's very crispy on the outside, very soft and fluffy on the inside, so it's the best of both worlds. Just getting the recipes from the get-go, from the beginning, was one of the hardest things but after that … all our objectives got checked off in an orderly fashion the way we wanted it to.”

Before opening, the owners conducted a soft launch surveying 200 members of their family, friends, their friends’ families, and anyone else they knew. They made sure everyone tasted every flavor they had to offer to ensure that their menu would sell. In July 2021, they launched their first location in Downers Grove, Illinois, and in less than a year they opened locations in nearby suburb Bolingbrook and the City of Chicago. The secret to their rapid success is simple – the waffle cones are incredible.

Their menu of desserts is like something from Willy Wonka’s factory, with serving portions that can easily be split by two people. I decided to try their Lotus Lover cone, which consisted of butter pecan ice cream coated in lotus butter, topped with whip cream and bits of cheesecake and biscoff cookies. The rich, smooth ice cream was perfectly complemented by the decadent, caramel-like lotus butter. The waffles themselves had a wonderful, warm, cakey interior with a shell that was firm enough to retain its shape even after the ice cream began to melt, allowing the melted flavors to seep into the crust. Taking a bite of both the waffle and ice cream at the same time was like biting into an explosion of sugary bliss, like a child eating funnel cake at a carnival for the first time.

Instead of sourcing generic ice cream that you would find at a grocery store, the owners partnered with a family-owned supplier, Capannari Ice Cream, to ensure good quality and a diversity of flavors. Everything that’s served at Eiffel Waffle is also halal and kosher, as they pride themselves in making food that’s accessible to anyone from across all cultures, being a Palestinian and Muslim-owned business (Falaneh joked that customers usually assume they’re Greek, to which he informs them that they are proudly Palestinan). As for the creative menu, Ghouleh was credited for being the main brainchild.

“I mean, I just came up with like each signature cone to cater to every single type of person,” Ghouleh says enthusiastically. “The colorful cones are for the kids, and I just basically based everything off doing tests. It worked out, and we just went from there.”

Opening a new business is always a risky maneuver no matter how you slice it, but Falaneh emphasized the importance of going all in on a dream you’re passionate about.

“Our families think we’re crazy, like I’m not joking,” Falaneh says. “For all the younger entrepreneurs, if you have that energy, just hit the gas. Now we've got people from all around the country wanting to franchise us, people from California, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, New York. We had a call the other day that was even from Brazil, but we refused. We want to keep everything in house to keep the quality up.”

Even though they’ve turned down these franchising offers, Falaneh did say they have plans to someday expand across the country, and they expect next year to be big in terms of expansion. 

“I pray for everybody to be successful. Here I thought we really we can try it,” Falaneh says. “Even though we started off with one location and we didn't know where it was going to end up. We still had to learn, try hard, and have sleepless nights. We didn't know where it was gonna go, whether it's gonna be successful, but you just gotta do what you got to do to gain that success.”