Reporting by Rachel Bernhard, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
From the vinyl-lined booths at Melrose, a casual breakfast-and-brunch spot at 6840 S. 27th St. in Oak Creek, a handful of regulars tuck into familiar favorites: fluffy stacks of pancakes, wheat toast slathered with raspberry jam, and sunny-side-up eggs resting atop a heap of crisp hash browns.
On the other side of the building, beyond the glass-topped divider separating Melrose from Haraz Coffee House, a cluster of teenagers crowd a pastry case filled with jewel-toned desserts shaped like nearly every fruit in the produce section: velvety pink peaches, glistening blueberries, sunny yellow lemons and curved bananas splotched with soft brown markings to indicate they’re ripe for eating.
They’re here for one thing: the viral fruit mousse cakes that have taken over TikTok.
It’s been a familiar scene at Haraz since the coffee shop opened in October. Now, nearly daily, it welcomes new customers curious about the almost-too-pretty-to-eat sweets flooding their social media feeds.
The viral desserts get people through the door. The challenge – and opportunity – is to give them a reason to return once the novelty wears off.
Is it cake?
The sweets the teens are ogling are colloquially called “viral fruit desserts.” Search the term on TikTok or Instagram and you’ll find endless videos of people – typically from the driver’s seat of their car – opening wide to bite into the pretty pastries with eyes stretched to their lids’ boundaries.
Looks like a mango. Tastes like a mango (sort of). Is not a mango.
It’s cake.
Traditionally, they’re known as trompe-l’oeil (French for “to trick the eye”), a dessert made with sponge cake, light mousse and flavored jam covered in white chocolate and decorated to look like fruits, nuts and other foods.
Though trompe-l’oeil pastries have existed for centuries, social media helped propel them into the mainstream. Among the chefs popularizing them is Cédric Grolet, a French pastry chef who began posting his hyper-realistic fruit creations on Instagram in 2022 and has since amassed 14 million followers.
Haraz Coffee House has offered the buzzworthy bites from its first day of business, with fans flocking there after it shared a TikTok video of the treats in October. Soon after, the shop was stocking 3,000 pieces a week, and that TikTok clip racked up nearly 200,000 views.
Since then, Haraz has continued chasing dessert trends, using social media buzz to attract customers and introduce them to a broader menu rooted in Yemeni coffee culture.
A coffee chain creating buzz in more ways than one
Ali and Sahar Hamed opened Wisconsin’s first Haraz Coffee House franchise on Milwaukee’s east side in early 2025; that location is now operated by franchisee Madhi Hassan.
A lifelong entrepreneur, Ali said he wanted to enter the coffee shop business to slow down a bit and create a place where he could spend more time with his family. In Oak Creek, where the family lives, the new location is like a second home.
Haraz is a Michigan-based chain of Yemeni coffee shops, with more than 60 stores across the country and more than 200 planned to open. The stores are a part of a boom of Arabic coffee shops opening across the country. Aside from desserts, they serve classic espresso drinks and specialize in traditional coffee like mufawar, spiced with cardamom; and maleki, made with ginger and cinnamon. Unlike traditional coffeehouses, Arabic shops keep late hours, offering a space for the community to gather at night in an alcohol-free environment.
Haraz Coffee House’s Oak Creek hours are 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday to Thursday and 7 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday.
The Hameds purchased the Melrose restaurant in March 2025, and after the success of their first Haraz franchise in Milwaukee, they decided to redesign the space to add a second Haraz location inside the restaurant. They hope to open another Haraz location, in the Aloft hotel in downtown Milwaukee, in September.
The east-side Milwaukee location also carries the viral desserts, as do competitors like Walker’s Point coffeehouse Azal and Franklin’s MOTW Coffee House.
But Haraz Oak Creek has an advantage.
Sharing a walk-in cooler with the adjoining restaurant gives Haraz Oak Creek room to stock far more flavors than its counterparts. That means instead of a case with a half-dozen varieties of viral fruit desserts, Oak Creek keeps nearly 20 at a time.
Mango is the most popular flavor, by far, Sahar said. Other top sellers include blackberry, lemon, raspberry and strawberry. New flavors like pear and cantaloupe have been hits this summer, too.
The desserts ($10 each) are shaped in silicone molds and filled with moist sponge cake and an airy mousse. Each variety is filled with a jam flavored like the fruit it’s intended to resemble, but with a sweeter, more concentrated flavor. These pretty things are not for the saccharine averse, but they’re light enough that you won’t be sent into a sugar coma after polishing one off, either.
Sahar said customers have driven as far as four hours just to try Haraz’s viral desserts after seeing them online.
Leanah Williams has been coming to Haraz’s Oak Creek location since January, when she first saw the desserts on TikTok.
After searching where she could find them in the area, she tracked down Haraz. Now, she visits the shop at least once a month for her viral fruit fix.
Orange is her favorite, but she’s open to trying new flavors. Lemon is a close second, and she’s a fan of strawberry, as well.
She brought friend Kayla Schulz to Haraz for the first time in July. Schulz said she thinks the fruit desserts are pretty, but the chocolate lover couldn’t resist Haraz’s Dubai chocolate bear peeking at her from the dessert case. The chocolate-coated treat is molded into the shape of a sleepy bear resting on its belly and is filled with Dubai chocolate’s signature blend of crunchy pistachio, tahini and shredded knafeh (filo dough).
Fruit mousse cakes and Dubai chocolate aren’t the only trends Haraz has embraced. Sahar and her four children, ages 12 to 21, scour TikTok for emerging sweets, like the rainbow sprinkle-covered dot cakes that have flooded social media feeds since spring. In July, Haraz introduced a Cookie Monster-inspired dot cake (complete with mini cookies and a pair of googly eyes on top) that sold out almost immediately.
“The minute there’s a trend, we run right to it,” she said.
You can find another viral dessert, fruit ice cream, at Haraz, too. It’s the only place in the state where you can find Poppz ($30). Made by Michigan-based The Chocolate Bar, these social media sensations are tubs filled with bite-sized, fruit-shaped ice cream treats coated in dyed white chocolate – like the frozen version of the O.G. fruit mousse desserts.
Sahar said new customers come in all the time for these viral desserts, but they often become fans of the coffee house’s traditional desserts while they’re there.
Haraz’s milk cakes are big hits ($8 per slice). Think of them like tres leches cakes but soaked in flavors like saffron, rose, pistachio and cinnamon. Extra-tall, New York-style cheesecakes ($8 per slice) are also fan favorites.
Just don’t get too attached to a particular item. Aside from the viral desserts, croissants and milk cakes, Sahar likes to swap out the sweets two to three times a week.
“Every single time you come in, you’ll find new cheesecakes, milk cakes, new pastries,” she said. “If someone came in Monday and then came back Thursday, there are probably five or six new desserts you didn’t see before.”
Local bakers make most of the desserts in Haraz’s case, but it uses an outside distributor when sourcing its viral fruit cakes.
“Our bakers said they can’t keep up with the demand,” Sahar said, adding that it takes three days to make each variety.
Creating community beyond the viral desserts
At Haraz, presentation matters, from the drinks it serves to the space it serves them in.
A stately olive tree sprouting from a circular bench greets customers at the front door. The white floors gleam as sunlight streams through a row of windows. Coffee cups are finished in matte black and café tables are rimmed with gold accents. Chair backs are finished in woven rattan.
“We’ve had people walk in and say, ‘Wow, this reminds me of Kuwait or Dubai.’ And that’s what we’re going for … very upscale,” Sahar said. “Everything needs to be pretty.”
The desserts are stunners, but the beverages Haraz sells are, too. Cloud matchas – another coffeehouse trend – are drinkable art pieces presented in two–tone pastel colors. Vibrant Refreshers – caffeinated, fruit-flavored iced drinks – come in Instagrammable shades of fuchsia, gold and deep berry.
When the Hameds discovered one of their baristas was a talented espresso artist, they moved him to the morning shift to wow guests with creations like teddy bears, owls and even a Grinch made with foam topping a pistachio latte.
They may seem like gimmicks designed to lure a young customer base obsessed with all things “aesthetic.” But the Hameds want their coffeehouse to become a community hub: a place where college students can study, retirees can meet over mid–morning coffee, kids can stop in to celebrate a good report card, and a safe nighttime hang for teens.
Because of the adjacent restaurant space, Haraz can host community events, such as bingo nights, craft days for kids and, recently, World Cup watch parties.
It’s the Hameds’ hope that people will be hooked by the prettiness of the space, the sweets and the drinks, but then find a new third space they can consider as a second home.
Social media trends come and go. Today’s fruit mousse dessert may be buried by tomorrow’s algorithm.
Yet most days at Haraz, someone new is still pressed up against the pastry case, debating between the rainbow of desserts they saw on TikTok.
The Hameds welcome the trend-chasers.
If a mousse cake shaped like a peach gets someone through the door, there’s always a chance they’ll leave with something more lasting: a favorite coffee order, a familiar table and a place they want to return to.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Viral fruit desserts are fueling buzz at an Oak Creek coffee shop
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
