By Esther Onyegbula

For many African and Caribbean immigrants in the United States, access to familiar food remains shaped by distance, inconvenience and informal networks, despite the rapid expansion of food delivery technology across the country.

Families often travel long hours to specific neighbourhoods to purchase traditional ingredients or depend on a limited number of restaurants whose menus approximate home cooking. Most African and Caribbean grocery stores and restaurants are also largely absent from mainstream delivery platforms, constrained by high commission charges, digital barriers and business models that do not reflect how small ethnic food businesses operate.

A niche digital marketplace, ETNOWE, is attempting to address that gap by connecting African and Caribbean grocery stores and restaurants to customers through a single delivery platform.

Founded by Nigerian-born entrepreneur, Mr Ebenezer Oyinlade, ETNOWE was launched in 2022 after being conceptualised during the COVID-19 pandemic, when disruptions to physical shopping exposed the limitations faced by diaspora communities in accessing culturally specific food.

Unlike dominant delivery platforms that prioritise scale and high-volume vendors, ETNOWE targets small, community-owned food businesses that traditionally operate offline and depend largely on walk-in customers and word-of-mouth patronage.

The company said its model provides logistics support and simplified digital tools that enable these businesses to reach customers beyond their immediate neighbourhoods, while accommodating the pricing structures, product variety and supply chains common in ethnic food retail.

Between 2023 and 2024, ETNOWE expanded into several U.S. states, onboarding over 30 African and Caribbean grocery stores and restaurants and processing more than 10,000 orders. In 2025, it introduced ETNOWE Chops, a service focused on the delivery of ready-to-eat meals, in response to rising demand for restaurant food among users.

As of 2026, the platform operates in Texas, Maryland, Georgia and Indiana, with significant usage reported in cities including Dallas and Washington, D.C. The company offers same-day delivery, often within a few hours, and positions itself as a lower-cost alternative to mainstream food delivery apps.

In January 2026, ETNOWE raised $300,000 in pre-seed funding, which it said would be deployed to expand delivery coverage, onboard additional vendors and strengthen its technical and operational capacity over the next year.

The startup is operating within a U.S. ethnic food and grocery market estimated at about $50 billion, driven by growing immigrant populations and sustained demand for culturally specific food products.
Mr Oyinlade said the platform was designed to serve communities often overlooked by mainstream technology companies.

“African and Caribbean food is everywhere in the U.S., but access is not evenly distributed,” he said. “Most of these businesses are offline, and most delivery platforms are not built for them.”

ETNOWE said its growth has been largely organic, driven by community demand rather than aggressive marketing campaigns, and disclosed plans to seek institutional funding in 2027 as it scales operations.

Industry analysts note that platforms addressing structural access gaps, rather than convenience alone, are increasingly shaping the next phase of food delivery, particularly within immigrant and minority communities.

For many African and Caribbean families in the U.S., services like ETNOWE represent not just convenience, but a practical response to long-standing barriers to accessing food that reflects their culture and identity.