Shahezad Contractor’s initial aim in starting his halal burger business was simple: “I wanted more halal options.”
Now, with eight locations across the Northeast, he has much bigger dreams for Cousin’s Burger, the halal restaurant chain he launched in 2024.
“Our goal is to be the next In-and-Out or the next Shake Shack,” Contractor tells CNBC Make It.
Contractor, 44, is the founder and CEO of Cousin’s Food Inc., a halal restaurant group based in Philadelphia. Along with Cousin’s Burger, Contractor also owns a halal pizza shop, Cousin’s Pizza, and a halal barbecue joint, Cousin’s Smokehouse and Burgers.
Collectively, his restaurants brought in over $4 million in revenue in 2025, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
In Contractor’s view, there’s “a lot of untapped potential” in the halal food market. “You don’t need to be Muslim to enjoy halal,” Contractor says: Many people prefer halal meat because of its “high quality and cleanliness,” as well as its more humane treatment of animals.
Aside from the Halal Guys restaurant franchise, there are relatively few mainstream American halal food options in the U.S., Contractor says.
He’s hoping to change that.
How he got started
Contractor, who grew up on Long Island, got into the restaurant business almost by accident, he says. Technology was his first passion: after earning a degree in management information systems from SUNY Old Westbury, he spent 24 years working in IT.
The turning point came when his friend Tabish Hoda asked Contractor to participate in his halal food festival in 2023. Contractor, who has no formal culinary training but frequently cooks for family and friends, decided to make smashburgers — it was “the easiest thing I could do,” he says.
He bought enough meat to feed approximately 500 customers, expecting to have leftovers. Instead, Contractor sold out by 6 p.m. that day. “That’s when I realized that there was a ton of potential” in serving American-style halal food, he says.
Contractor started exploring the idea of opening his own restaurant in Philadelphia, which he saw as the “perfect location” to start a halal business due to its significant Muslim population, he says.
The first Cousin’s Burger location.
CNBC Make It
He partnered with Rizwan Ahmed, a restaurant owner he met at the halal festival to transform one of Ahmed’s existing restaurants into the first Cousin’s Burger location in 2024.
From there, the business expanded quickly. Cousin’s Burger currently has eight locations across Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
His recipe for success
Contractor attributes his restaurants’ popularity to three key characteristics: high-quality ingredients, “really simple” recipes, and excellent customer service.
He gets his meat from Prime Halal, a Philadelphia-based, halal-certified butcher shop. “It’s a bit more expensive than what you’d find in your normal restaurant supplier, but the taste speaks for itself,” he says.
The smashburger is “by far” the number one menu item at Cousin’s Burger, Contractor says, and they’ve gotten the recipe down to a science: A portion of USDA Prime Black Angus beef is smashed on a flat-top grill, seasoned with their signature spice blend and then covered with white American cheese. It’s served on a buttered, lightly-toasted potato roll and topped with pickles and Cousin’s Burger’s proprietary house sauce.
A halal smashburger from Cousin’s Burger.
CNBC Make It
A single smashburger typically costs $7 or $8, he says — the exact price depends on the location due to variations in rent.
Right now, food costs are “through the roof,” Contractor says. “I’d love to be able to sell a $4 burger, but it’s simply impossible. The economics of it doesn’t make sense.” Rent and labor are the other main expenses for Cousin’s Burger, according to Contractor.
Taking a “leap of faith” in a growing industry
These days, Contractor is less involved in the day-to-day operations of the restaurants. His main responsibilities are marketing, meeting with business partners and “continuing to grow the brand,” he says.
As the sole breadwinner of his household, which includes his wife and two daughters, Contractor says that it felt like a huge risk to leave his “very cushy” IT job to start a restaurant. At the same time, he had begun to worry that AI would affect his job security, so he decided to take a “leap of faith” and launch his own business.
“Building something for yourself, something that can potentially make generational wealth as well,” he says, “was really appealing to me.”
Contractor’s long-term goal is to make Cousin’s Burger a global brand, he says. Over the next few years, he hopes to open 50 locations and to expand into other countries, including Canada.
“I think the sky’s the limit,” Contractor says. “We’re going to keep going until somebody tells us to stop, or we can’t do it anymore.”
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