Ep. 5 Is African Food Really Too Expensive?
This summer the internet asked a question a lot of us have been asking quietly for years: why is African food so expensive in America? In this episode we take the question seriously instead of getting defensive about it. We break down what's really behind the price of a bottle of palm oil, we talk honestly about the feedback we've been hearing all summer, and we share what we're building to actually bring prices down. Because explaining a price is not the same as fixing it.
Podcast Transcript
Is African Food Really Too Expensive? An Honest Answer From People Who Sell It
Introduction
Welcome back to the Destiny African Market(ing) Podcast. I'm so glad you're here with us today. If you're new here, this is where we celebrate West African culture, cuisine, and the incredible stories that connect our diaspora from Randolph to Accra, from Lagos and beyond. My name is Bukky, marketing director and store manager here at Destiny African Market. And today we're talking about money. If you've been anywhere near African social media this August, you know what happened. A creator asked a simple question: why are African foods so expensive in America? Naija Nation put it to their whole audience. People in other countries say they get the same dishes for way less. Is this true, or is it exaggerated? The comments went crazy, and they've been going crazy all year. The brother who went viral over a hundred and forty dollar bill for two plates of egusi and pounded yam. The videos dragging Nigerian restaurants for forty five dollar jollof. Some people call it exploitation. Some people call it business. Almost nobody is showing their work.
And for us, this isn't a debate we're watching. It's a conversation we're having at the register. There's a moment I have more often than I'd like to admit. Somebody picks up a bottle of palm oil. Turns it over. Looks at the price. Then looks at me. Sometimes they say it out loud. Ah ah, why now? Sometimes they say nothing at all and just put it back on the shelf. That one is worse. We've heard it a lot this summer. Our prices are too high. You're cheaper down the road. And I could give you all the reasons it's not as simple as it looks. I will, because it genuinely isn't. But I want to start with the hard part. They're not wrong. It is expensive.
So today we're not doing a defense. We're doing an accounting.
First, Is It Even True?
Yes. Plates running twenty five to forty five dollars across the US, Canada and the UK. If you shop for our food in the diaspora, that's not news to you. But here's where the conversation goes sideways. People compare the price here to the price in Lagos and conclude somebody in the middle is stealing. And the price back home isn't what it used to be either. The SBM Jollof Index has tracked the cost of cooking one pot of jollof in Nigeria since 2016. Between March 2023 and June 2025, that cost went up a hundred and fifty three percent. One pot. Food inflation was still above sixteen percent as of April this year. So when somebody tells me it's cheap back home, I want to gently ask: cheap for who, and cheap when? Families in Lagos are cutting portions right now. That's the whole chain under pressure, and we're standing at the far end of it.
What You're Actually Paying For
Let me walk a bottle of palm oil from a tree in Nigeria to our shelf in Randolph. Somebody grows it, and that person has almost no control over what happens next. Then it passes through aggregators, transporters, processors, exporters, customs agents, wholesalers. Every one of those steps is solving a real problem. Moving perishable food across an ocean is hard. But every step also takes a margin. By the time that bottle hits an American port it's been marked up six or seven times, and none of those markups were ours.
Then there's the part nobody talks about. A store like ours needs reliable quantity, predictable quality, correct labeling, delivery on schedule. We don't get that. We get improvisation. A shipment shows up short. A brand changes its formulation without telling anybody. A container sits, the temperature drifts, the product is gone. When every order is a gamble, everybody prices in the gamble. Italian food travels with branded pasta. Japanese food travels with standardized ingredients. Our food is world famous, but it's still moving through informal relationships and unbranded sacks. We're eating global food carried around the world by a system nobody built for it. And then, brand new this summer. On July twenty fourth, the United States put a twelve and a half percent tariff on imports from Nigeria. Oil is exempt. Agricultural products are not. Let me say that again for the people in the comments. Six weeks before the internet decided African store owners were price gouging, the cost of bringing agricultural goods from Nigeria into this country went up twelve and a half percent by law.
One more thing, on the "just buy it locally" argument. Partially true, and I won't defend anybody charging import prices for a domestic onion. But egusi, ogbono, stockfish, locust beans, bitter leaf, red palm oil, puna yam. Agbalumo, which we did a whole episode on, doesn't grow here and needs cold chain shipping and USDA clearance just to arrive intact. There's no local version of that. There's only the one that made the trip.
Now Let's Talk About Us
People compare us. They should. Somebody will buy a liter of oil here and find two liters somewhere else for the same money, and they'll want to know how that's possible.
Part of the answer is real. Different brands, different grades, different volumes, different importers with different contracts. A liter of one brand and two liters of another are not the same product, any more than two bottles of olive oil at the same size are the same product. We buy from suppliers who give us consistency, and the times we've tried going cheaper, our customers noticed immediately and told us so.
That's all true. And it's still not a good enough answer. Because when somebody tells you your price hurts, "let me explain why the price is correct" doesn't respond to the thing they actually said. They're not telling you they don't understand your costs. They're telling you they can't afford you and somebody else did it cheaper. Those are different complaints, and only one of them can be fixed with an explanation.
The other one can only be fixed with a lower price.
I'll say something similar about our policies. We can't take back perishable groceries once they leave the store. That's a food safety rule, not a preference. But we can do a much better job telling you that before the sale instead of after, because finding out about a policy at the moment it costs you money feels like a trap even when it isn't. That's on us and we're fixing it.
So What Are We Doing About It?
We're building our own distribution.
Instead of buying from the end of a chain that's been marked up six times, we're working to source and move product ourselves. Cut out layers. Own more of the line between the farm and the shelf. If it works, it means lower prices. Not better explanations. Lower prices. That's the only version of this that actually answers the question.
And let me be honest about what I'm not promising. This is hard, it's capital intensive, and small businesses attempt it and fail all the time. I'm not giving you a date. What I'll tell you is that we're determined, we're working, and the DAM FAM will be the first to know when it moves.
Because the reason our food costs what it costs is that our food doesn't have infrastructure yet. Somebody has to build it. Might as well be a family business in Randolph that got tired of explaining prices instead of changing them.
Closing
So, is African food really too expensive in America? Yes. And for reasons that mostly aren't about the store you're standing in. A supply chain that takes a margin at every stage and gives the farmer almost none of it. A tariff that landed in July. A price back home that's climbing too. And businesses like ours that haven't built the alternative yet.
Here's the thing about all that pressure. Everybody in this chain is carrying it, and the only two people who ever meet face to face are the cashier and the customer. So that's where the frustration lands. Between two people who are both just trying to make it. There is no villain at the counter.
So keep asking the question. Ask us directly, at the counter, and I'll tell you what something costs us. But when you're arguing about this online, ask the next question too. Not just why is it expensive, but who's actually holding the money. Because I promise you it is not the auntie running the market on South Main Street.
And to everybody who told us this summer that our prices were too high: we heard you. You were right to say it. We're building something so that the next time you compare, the answer makes sense.
To the DAM FAM, thank you for every time you chose us when you had cheaper options. We're not going to make you pay for that loyalty forever.
Come see us at 502 South Main Street in Randolph. Follow us at @destinyafricanmarket. And if this one gave you something, send it to somebody who's been in the comments arguing about jollof prices.
Until next time, remember: food is our love language, culture is our foundation, and community is our strength.
This is the Destiny African Market(ing) Podcast, bringing you the stories, flavors, and culture of West Africa, right here in Greater Boston.
