The co-founder of Sip of Silk discusses opening a coffee shop and trying to both celebrate her heritage and support her community amidst an ongoing terror campaign by the federal government.
It's the Coffee News Roundup: Week Ending January 30th
Independent coffee shops are speaking up for their neighbours and saying no to ICE in their stores. Some big coffee brands, however, have taken a different approach.
The co-founder of Sip of Silk discusses opening a coffee shop and trying to both celebrate her heritage and support her community amidst an ongoing terror campaign by the federal government.
“The funny thing is, I don’t like coffee”, says Hanan Wazwaz when I ask about how Sip of Silk came about.
Despite working as a barista at Caribou Coffee as a teenager—“I love the smell of it, [and] I think it’s fun to make”—Wazwaz never liked the taste. A Palestinian-American, she was in an accelerated programme at nursing school in 2023 when Israel’s genocide in Gaza began. “I was already more stressed than your average nursing student”, she says, “The school that I went to didn’t support me, and nobody really talked about it”.
Wazwaz has family in the West Bank, and friends whose families were killed in Gaza. “I was just angry all the time because of what was happening, and it was bothering me that people were so silent about it”.
The idea to open Sip of Silk started that November, but took two years to come to fruition. Along with her husband, Salvadoran-American Alejandro Soto Bonilla, Wazwaz decided to “make something for us, by us”. The couple took research trips to Illinois and Michigan, inspired in part by the growing number of Yemeni coffeehouses, and brought on Wazwaz’ sister Danya and cousin Ahmad as co-owners.
Sip of Silk opened in November 2025 near the University of Minnesota’s campus in Minneapolis. The next month, the Trump administration sent thousands of Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents to brutalise the state as part of the so-called Operation Metro Surge.
I spoke with Wazwaz about running a newly-opened coffee shop and trying to both celebrate her and her husband's heritage and support her community during the ongoing siege of Minneapolis.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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