Grocery Delivery Diversified

Grocery Delivery Diversified
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Amazon, Peapod, Boxed and others have brought a level of convenience to consumers that cut hours of errand running out of a given week. But, for those folks who occasionally prefer delicacies of a particular African and/or Caribbean flair, grocery delivery remains in the old school, do-it-yourself category. Getting these items, considered of the "speciality" variety, still requires a bit more planning for most.

The idea for a different kind of online grocery delivery first came to Boyede Sobitan, co-founder of Oja Express, an African and Caribbean grocery delivery app, based on a conversation he had with friends nearly eighteen months ago.

"A friend's wife lamented on how the African grocery stores were not conveniently located, and when she does go she has to take her two young children with her," Sobitan explains.

"She uses Peapod for her other groceries, so I started to do research and discovered there were no same day or next day services for the African/Caribbean demographic. "

Sobitan teamed up with an app developer, Fola Dada, and the two founders soon developed the Oja Express app that currently serves Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. It hopes to expand to other major cities like New York City, Houston, Texas and the Washington, D.C. area. The app officially launched back in April.

At the very beginning, the duo delivered groceries themselves. But, in order to better execute their overall vision, Sobitan and Dada thought it was time to develop a leadership team and find reliable drivers. The leadership team soon grew to a size that included a Chief Brand Director, Managing Editor and Lead Developer.

"The addition of these team members has helped us to become a better company," said Sobitan.

People are not only using the service for personal delivery, but to get specialty food to their loved ones so that they won't have to deal with the inconveniences sometimes associated with getting groceries themselves.

"We had a customer use this app to deliver groceries to her mother that was recovering from a bad cold," Sobitan said. " It was a really cold day, and the young lady was at work, so she asked her mom what she needed, and used OjaExpress to get the groceries to her mother."

Sheila Oshuntuyi, a resident of the Bronzeville neighborhood in Chicago, has been an Oja Express customer for about a year.

" Being a working woman, wife, mother...it's hard to run around, so this makes things easier. This is very targeted to women like myself," Oshuntuyi said.

Oshuntuyi buys African food items, like goat meat and oxtail, about once a month from Oja Express in bulk.

Sobitan says that the mission of his company goes beyond grocery delivery.

"Oja Express is not just about providing convenient ways for our customers to obtain ethnic foods, it also allows us to influence the ways other ethnic groups interact with the African and Caribbean cultures," said Sobitan.

Sobitan hopes that easier access to African and Caribbean food could lead to a greater awareness of this type of cooking.

"We'd like to popularize African and Caribbean food the same way places, such as Chipotle and Qdobas, have popularized Mexican food. Essentially, our service is for anyone who enjoys the tastes and flavors of Africa and the Caribbean."

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