From a Beirut warzone to a Bay square table: Furn Beaino’s journey across generations

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When Toni Beaino opened a small stall in Jounieh in 1975, Lebanon was already burning. The civil war had just begun, and most people were thinking about survival, not sandwiches. Yet Toni, barely 20 years old, was doing both. Every morning before the rest of the city woke, he was at that stall, rolling dough with his hands, pressing minced lamb into thin rounds of flatbread, and sliding them into a blazing oven. The smell alone was enough to gather a crowd. That stall grew into something nobody in the family fully anticipated. 

Furn Beaino, furn being Arabic for bakery, moved from Jounieh to a neighborhood in Sarba roughly fifteen years later, then settled into a location in the area around 1990 that still operates today. It is a little more than a pickup counter with a few bar chairs and a terrace, but visitors who grew up eating there still stop in straight from the airport, before they do anything else in Lebanon. The lahm baajin, that signature meat pie of mince lamb, tomatoes, and onions spread over a crisp round flatbread, finished with a squeeze of lemon, has a way of doing that to people.

A legacy forged without a recipe book

Toni never went to culinary school. There were no recipe manuals, no operational guides, just instinct, repetition, and the kind of relentless work ethic that makes you show up at 3 a.m. even when you are exhausted. He built Furn Beaino on what would become its four founding pillars: Quality, Consistency, Passion, and Pride, the same four values now etched as four parallel lines in the brand’s logo. Furn Beaino remained a neighborhood institution for decades. 

The menu was lean, thyme manakish, cheese, spinach, a few simple variations, and the team was small enough to count on one hand. Yet something about the place was magnetic. It drew regulars who came back every week. It drew Lebanese expats who treated a visit back home as incomplete without a stop there. Even today, at 72, Toni still drives to the central kitchen in Lebanon each morning to prepare the meat for the lahm baajin himself. The man who started with one stall and no blueprint has never stopped showing up.

Two sons, one expanded vision

When the time came to take Furn Beaino beyond its roots, the family turned inward. Wissam El Beaino, the eldest son, had spent eight years working as an engineer after completing a master’s degree from one of Lebanon’s top universities, with more than nine academic publications to his name. He walked away from all of it. “It’s like something that’s running in the veins,” Wissam has said of the family business. “It’s the only thing that you have, and you really want to take good care of it.” 

His brother Samer took on the role of Co-CEO in Lebanon, overseeing daily operations at home. Wissam moved to the UAE, driven not by financial pressure, but by a clear-eyed reading of what Lebanon’s political turmoil and banking crisis were making impossible, and what Dubai could offer instead. The expansion into the UAE began in 2022 with a cloud kitchen in Business Bay, Dubai, followed by a second in 2023 on Hessa Street.

A third opened in Silicon Oasis, and a fourth is slated for Al Reem Island in Abu Dhabi. Then, in early 2026, Furn Beaino opened its first brick-and-mortar flagship at Bay Square in Business Bay, a full dining experience that marks a decisive departure from delivery-only operations. Two more flagship locations are planned for 2026, along with additional cloud kitchens in Sharjah and Ras Al-Khaimah.

Partnering to scale

The most telling measure of Furn Beaino’s ambitions may be what the company has done beyond its own name. Through a strategic partnership with Ambrosia Foods, a regional food platform backed by Pulsar Capital, Furn Beaino has secured the master franchise rights for Mr. Brown, an American diner concept, across the GCC. The partnership sets a target of more than 70 locations across the region by 2030, turning what began as a Lebanese bakery into a multi-concept food group.

“Our openings in Dubai and Abu Dhabi represent a major milestone in Furn Beaino’s regional journey,” Wissam has said. “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.” The standards backing that promise are not just rhetorical.  Furn Beaino’s central kitchen in Lebanon holds ISO 22000:2018 and FSSC 22000 food safety certifications. 

The latter was granted by UKAS, one of the most stringent certifying bodies in the world—and one of only three such certifications awarded in Lebanon. What Toni Beaino built by hand in a Jounieh warzone, his sons are now carrying into the Gulf with the resources and structure that a 50-year-old brand has earned. The original stall is still there. The meat is still made the same way. And the family is still very much at the table.