In 1975, Toni Beaino opened a tiny bakery stall in the old souks of Jounieh, Lebanon. He was twenty years old, a civil war had just broken out around him, and the only capital he had was a stubborn refusal to cut corners. Today, his sons are moving that legacy across the Gulf — and they are doing it fast.
Furn Beaino, the Lebanese fast-casual brand now operating across Dubai and Abu Dhabi, has entered one of its boldest chapters. Through a strategic partnership with Ambrosia Foods — a regional platform backed by Pulsar Capital — the company is acquiring master franchise rights for Mr. Brown, the beloved Lebanese-founded American diner concept, alongside other brands. The target: more than 70 locations across the GCC by 2030.
A Legacy That Refuses to Stand Still
The word furn is Arabic for “bakery,” and the name itself suggests where this business was born. Toni Beaino spent years waking up at 3 A.M., cutting the meat himself, preparing the dough by hand, and baking his signature lahm baajin — a fragrant blend of minced lamb, onions, and tomatoes spread thin on flatbread, finished with a drizzle of lemon and a crack of pepper. There were no recipe cards, no operational manuals, no branding playbook. There was just a man who loved his work and refused to deliver anything less than what he considered right.
At 72, Toni still arrives at the central kitchen to prepare the meat for that same dish. The Furn Beaino central kitchen in Zouk Mikael, established in 2017, now holds the FSSC 22000 certification in food safety management — awarded by UKAS, the British accreditation body, making Furn Beaino one of only three establishments in Lebanon to hold the distinction. That kind of rigor did not come from a corporate mandate. It came from a family that had spent decades treating quality as a personal matter.
Wissam El Beaino, Toni’s son and the company’s CEO leading the GCC push, left a career in engineering — eight years in the field, a master’s degree, and nine academic publications — to steer the brand into new markets. His brother Samer, co-CEO, holds the fort in Lebanon. Between the two of them, they have turned a neighborhood bakery into a multi-location operation with over 100 staff in Lebanon and 50 across its UAE network.
The GCC Push
Furn Beaino’s UAE chapter opened in 2022 with a cloud kitchen in Dubai’s Business Bay. A second followed in 2023 on Hessa Street. The momentum has not slowed: a new cloud kitchen in Silicon Oasis is operational, another has opened on Al Reem Island in Abu Dhabi, and the brand’s first brick-and-mortar flagship launched in Bay Square, Business Bay, earlier in 2026. Two more flagships are scheduled before year’s end, with cloud kitchens mapped across Sharjah and Ras Al-Khaimah.
What makes this wave of openings different is the portfolio play sitting behind it. The partnership with Ambrosia Foods has positioned Furn Beaino as more than a single-brand operator. Acquiring master franchise rights for Mr. Brown — a casual American diner established in Lebanon in 2002 and already carrying a loyal following — means Furn Beaino can speak to a wider audience without diluting what made it famous. Lahm baajin and a smash burger can coexist in the same portfolio. The GCC’s appetite for both has never been stronger.
“Our openings in Dubai and Abu Dhabi represent a major milestone in Furn Beaino’s regional journey,” said Wissam El Beaino. “Expanding our partnership with Ambrosia Foods allows us to scale responsibly, enter new markets faster, and deliver the same authentic experience our customers have trusted since 1975.”
What Multiple Locations Actually Mean
Words like “multiple locations by 2030” tend to wash over people. The clearer way to read it: Furn Beaino is staking a claim on the GCC food market not as a Lebanese nostalgic export, but as a durable regional operator with multiple formats. The company has demonstrated 30% revenue growth in Dubai alone. With Ambrosia’s regional networks and Pulsar Capital’s financial backing providing structural support, the growth plan has real architecture behind it.
The four pillars encoded into the Furn Beaino logo — Quality, Consistency, Passion, and Pride, rendered as four parallel lines — were never marketing language. Wissam has described them as the operating framework his father lived by before anyone thought to write them down. Carrying that through a multiple-location expansion is the actual challenge. Based on what this family has already survived — war, financial collapse, a port explosion that shook all of Lebanon — the odds of them losing the thread seem lower than most would assume.
