Grocer Presses On, Inspires Next Gen

Watching his mother operate a grocery store in a pandemic, budding entreprenuer Chiekh Idrissou has learned that the best businesses fit the term ​“essential.”

Idrissou wouldn’t normally spend so much time helping his mother Loubabtou Harris run her Dixwell Avenue African grocery store. In normal times, he works as an assistant manager in the shoe section of Eb Lens in Milford, and he runs his own photography and videography operation on the side. He is now laid off. And a wedding he was supposed to photograph was canceled. So, he is helping his mother run Motherland Market.

She needs the help:the store, located at 897 Dixwell Ave. in Hamden, has seen more business since the Covid-19 pandemic began. Idrissou said he thinks it’s because people are home and have less to do than they normally would. ​“I feel like food kind of soothes people,” he said.

Motherland Market carries imports from all over Africa that are hard to come by anywhere else. Harris, who goes by the nickname Aida, drives to New York or New Jersey multiple times a week to pick up supplies shipped from Africa. Loyal customers drive from all over the state to pick up supplies they can only find there.

Harris, who is from Togo originally, carries products from all over Africa. (Click here to read a previous article about Harris and Motherland Market.)

Idrissou said he knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur from a young age after he saw both his mother and grandmother run their own stores. Before Motherland Market came into being, Harris’s mother ran a similar store in Lomé, Togo. 

Idrissou said he’s mostly interested in the craft of business. He doesn’t have a strong desire to go into any particular line of the profession. The pandemic, however, has changed his calculation.

“With this whole pandemic, it’s showing me that within entrepreneurship you got to really choose wisely,” he said. ​“Helping anybody’s essential need is the best business.”

Now, he said, he realizes that people like his mother who run grocery stores are essential for society to work.

“We tend to neglect our essential workers every day,” he said. ​“We glorify whatever destroys us.”

All Stocked, Except For Bitter Kola

While the pandemic has forced tens of millions of Americans out of their jobs, others have suddenly found themselves risking their lives at jobs that used to be under-appreciated but that are now deemed essential. For instance, grocery store workers in Connecticut are seeking to become designated as first responders by the state. Other states have already made those designations.

At Motherland Market, business continues, but with a little extra help. This week, both of Harris’s sons, Chiekh and Sidy Idrissou, have been there stocking shelves and checking out customers’ groceries. The shelves were fully stocked, and customers wandered in every few minutes.

The store looks mostly the same as it did before the pandemic, save for a few subtle changes. Two white hand sanitizer dispensers are now mounted by the door. Lines of green tape are spaced six feet apart in front of the cash register to make sure customers keep their distance as much as possible in the cramped aisle. Harris and her sons now let no more than five customers in at a time.

They are strict about making sure every customer wears a mask. As Chiekh Idrissou stood outside the store, an unmasked customer approached. Idrissou greeted him in French, and told him he needed a mask. The customer walked back to his car and came back with a mask he had sewn himself from beige cloth.

The man, who declined to give his name, said he had to sew one himself because he couldn’t find one to buy. He is a nurse’s assistant at Yale New Haven Hospital. At work, he said, he sometimes has to reuse his N95 respirators.

Motherland Market relies entirely on imports from Africa. With workers staying home all over the world, food supply chains that would normally keep goods flowing across the Atlantic have slowed, said Idrissou.

But the store is in good shape. Harris said she has enough wares in reserve, both in Hamden and at storage units in New York, to last another five months. And trade has not stopped; it has simply slowed. She said she is not worried that she won’t be able to continue stocking the store.

The store does not carry paper towels or toilet paper that would now leave a few shelves empty. Motherland Market has seen a run on only one good: bitter kola. Bitter kola is a nut from central and western Africa prized for its medicinal properties, including for respiratory ailments like bronchitis.

“I tell you, we sold out fast,” Idrissou said.