There is certainly a market gap in some communities for hard to find African and Caribbean grocery such as smoked goat, melon seeds and gari and now one entrepreneur has set up an app to delivery straight to the doors of those in Chicago.

The app, OjaExpress, came about as of co-founder Boyede Sobitan was speaking to a friend’s wife.

He said “She uses Peapod and was like ‘Wow, I wish there was something for Africans because I don’t want to go all the way to an African store with two young kids to go grocery shopping.'”

Right now the app is in it’s early version and just launched last month but co-founders Boyede Sobitan and Fola Dada are already working on version 2 and looking to add many features such as recipe finders and partnerships with local african restaurants.

Of course having access to these ingredients will be extremely convenient for many families and the idea is to grow it outside of the Chicago area and into other big cities such as NYC.

On the flip side there is a worry that this could hurt locally owned small business that sells these speciality ingredients.

Will you be using this app?

OjaExpress is available on the Apple and Android app stores.