The oudh house Arabian Oud — by its own account the world's largest oudh retailer — with over 900 boutiques across 35 countries. Arabian Oud was founded in Riyadh in 1982 and has grown into a global empire of oriental perfumery.
Founded in 1983 by brothers Ahmed and Khaled Al-Dakheel from a stall in Riyadh's Souk Al Deira, Al Dakheel Oud now runs 80-plus branches and its own lab and production lines, making oud, attars and bakhoor under SFDA and ISO 9001 certification.
Best for Founded in 1983 by brothers Ahmed and Khaled Al-Dakheel from a stall
Al Dakheel Oud was founded in 1983 by brothers Ahmed and Khaled, sons of Fahd Al-Dakheel, who started with a small exhibition stall in Riyadh's Souk Al Deira. Over four decades the business grew from that single stall into a manufacturer with its own laboratory, robotic production lines and warehouses, now operating more than 80 outlets across Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf. Its catalogue runs past 500 product lines spanning agarwood, oriental fragrance mixtures, body fragrance, and bakhoor and oud, produced under both its own name and contract manufacturing for other brands — a scale that puts it closer to an industrial Saudi perfumery group than a single boutique. The company holds SFDA licensing (Saudi Arabia's Food and Drug Authority) and ISO 9001:2015 certification, credentials that mark it as one of the older FDA-certified fragrance manufacturers in the kingdom. What began as a family exhibition stand has become a vertically integrated operation: Al Dakheel controls its own production from raw oud through to bottled attar and bakhoor, rather than reselling sourced stock, while still trading under the family name that opened the original Souk Al Deira stall in 1983.
Al Majed for Oud began in 1956, when Sheikh Ali bin Othman Al Majed started a wholesale trade in oud and saffron; the company took formal commercial registration in Riyadh in 1982 and has been headquartered there since.
Best for Oud wood, oils and Gulf oriental perfumes
Al Majed for Oud began in 1956, when Sheikh Ali bin Othman Al Majed started a wholesale trade in oud and saffron; the company took formal commercial registration in Riyadh in 1982 and has been headquartered there since. From that wholesale start, it has grown into one of the larger oud-focused retail groups in the Gulf: as of the end of 2023 the company operated 286 stores and more than 650 products across 132 brands, spanning Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar.
The range runs from raw oud wood and oil through oriental and French-style perfumes to home, body, and hair-care lines built around the same fragrance materials — a spread that reflects the company's roots as a raw-material trader as much as a perfume retailer. Its scale is unusual even among established Gulf oud houses: nearly seventy years after Sheikh Ali bin Othman Al Majed's original wholesale trade, the company listed 30 percent of its shares on the Saudi exchange in a Riyadh IPO, a step few oud houses of comparable age have taken.
From that single Riyadh headquarters, Al Majed for Oud now supplies its own retail network across six Gulf countries, still trading on the oud and saffron wholesale expertise the company was built on.
Elixir Bunn Coffee Roasters has been operating in Riyadh since 2014, among the first dedicated specialty coffee spots the city had at a time when specialty coffee was still a niche category in Saudi Arabia.
Best for Specialty coffee blends sourcing beans from Latin America and Africa
Elixir Bunn Coffee Roasters has been operating in Riyadh since 2014, among the first dedicated specialty coffee spots the city had at a time when specialty coffee was still a niche category in Saudi Arabia. It sources and blends beans from both Latin America and Africa, drawing on two of the world's major coffee-growing regions rather than limiting its list to a single origin area.
Opening as early as it did put Elixir Bunn ahead of Riyadh's broader specialty coffee growth, giving it a decade-plus head start on a scene that has since expanded considerably around it. That early positioning, combined with a sourcing list that spans two continents, has kept the roastery relevant as Riyadh's coffee culture has matured past its early years into a more crowded and competitive market.
For a city where specialty coffee is a relatively recent development, Elixir Bunn's decade-plus history and Latin America-and-Africa sourcing give it a longer track record than most of the shops that have opened around it since.