Tariq Hamed: You come to my restaurant, you're served, you're respected. Anybody comes into, our restaurant is coming to my home. Everybody loves a burger. It's a comfort food. I've always had a passion for cooking. Cooking is my safe zone. I believe I'm really good at it.
Hussein Beydoun: The gentleman who owned the building, he was ready to retire. One day he came up to me and he asked me if I was ever interested in buying the building. So I reached out to Tarek.
Tariq Hamed: He called me and he asked me, Hey, would you do a partnership?
Hussein Beydoun: And he goes, we're going to open up a restaurant. And I'll never forget that moment. I never worked in a restaurant. The first day I worked in a restaurant was the day we opened.
Tariq Hamed: This is a family business as well, saying his family close by. My daughters live in the area. Everything I do involves the family.
Hussein Beydoun: So my wife's daycare is right next door. Then our house is only a few blocks away as well. So throughout the majority of the day, we're all within a hundred feet of each other.
Tariq Hamed: It goes back to how our community treated us growing up here in Dearborn. When you look at your history and you implement those things in what we do today, you're giving back the positive, giving back that energy.
Hussein Beydoun: There's only a few people who are blessed enough to have a business. We're giving back to the community that raised us. I wouldn't go anywhere else. This is home for us. This is the biggest Muslim population in North America. But we wanted to make a very open environment for everyone. We wanted to make a space that was welcoming to all communities. When we took over the space, it used to be a bar. So we turned up to a dessert bar and we named it Zee's Dessert Bar, after my sister. She bakes all of our goods, prepares all of the lava cakes, she does everything from scratch. We do everything here with love, and we're coming friends with every, everyone.
Tariq Hamed: Every customer that comes in here, we make them feel that you're part of our success.
Hussein Beydoun: Knowing that the community has your back makes you feel a lot better about going into a business. The gratification you get from building your own thing, from doing something yourself at the end is something that very few things compare to.
Tariq Hamed: To me, success is the amount of time that you put in. But if I'm not successful within the community, that's not the success I want.
