Deli Foods Provides Native Fare for Apple Valley's African Community

The name of Sabina Domfeh’s store is just one letter different from the store that used to occupy the same space.

The goods she provides, however, are worlds different.

Domfeh’s Deli Foods, an African market, has been providing African food and other items for about seven months from its location in Apple Valley’s Time Square shopping center. It moved into the space that previously was Desi Foods, an Indian grocery store.

Before Deli Foods opened, members of Apple Valley’s African community had to go to stores in Richfield or Brooklyn Park to find the food items they were looking for, Domfeh’s husband, Bonsu Osei, said.

The store was also Domfeh’s way of providing a backup plan for her family in case she or Osei lose their other jobs.

Members of the Apple Valley African community includes natives of Kenya, Somalia, Nigeria, Liberia, Ethiopia, Togo, Sierra Leone, Gambia and more countries, but they all have some eating habits in common, Osei said.

“We all eat fufu,” Osei said, which is sold as a dry good, but eaten as a thicker paste or moist, doughy ball. Examples at Deli Foods include plantain fufu and flour fufu.

Other items offered at Deli Foods include palm oil, African peanut butter, ground cassava for tapioca, smoked and frozen chickens and other things Osei said traditional grocery stores in Apple Valley don’t offer.

“[Domfeh] cannot compete with them,” he said, so she carries her own unique items.

The items also go beyond food, to include African clothing, movies, personal-hygiene items and phone cards specifically for making calls to Africa.

Sidy-Yaya Toure, an Apple Valley resident who is a native of the Ivory Coast, said there are lots of items he and his wife, Senegal native Kine Toure, like to buy at Deli Foods, as he picked out a chicken from the freezer. It’s more convenient to stay in Apple Valley to do his shopping, he said.

“Go forward and grab it”

Domfeh and Osei are natives of Ghana; though they both speak English, to each other they often speak Twi, the most common language in Ghana.

Osei came to the United States in 1995, but went back to Ghana to marry Domfeh in 1999. She came to the United States in 2003.

They moved to Minnesota in 2007, after Osei lost his job in Maryland, he said.

The family has five kids, who are now 4, 6, 11, 15 and 19; Osei said he wanted them to have an American education and a better life than in Africa, by working hard here to achieve what they want to achieve.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to teach my children,” he said.

They first lived in Bloomington in Minnesota, but moved to Apple Valley just this May after Domfeh started her store, so they could live closer to it.

Domfeh works two other jobs in addition to running Deli Foods. She had to save her own money to open the store because she was refused a loan, said Osei, who works part-time at the Martin Luther Care Center in Bloomington. Sometimes the two oldest children help at the store, he said.

Every time someone suggests an item she doesn’t have, she writes it down to try to find. In the several months so far, the shelves have gradually become fuller and more people have shopped, Domfeh said.

Domfeh said it’s been challenging getting the word out about Deli Foods, but friends and other business owners have encouraged her to stick with it and let the store develop for a couple years. She hopes it will eventually be a success for her family.

“She’s very, very brave to do a business at this time,” Osei said. “You always have to go forward and grab it.”