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African Stores opens its doors on the first of August. Everyone who joins our waitlist before that morning becomes a founding member. This article explains exactly what that means, what you get, and why, whatever we build in the years ahead, this is the one thing we will never be able to offer again.

What a founding member is

A founding member is someone who believed before the proof. When you join the waitlist, whether as a shopper looking for a taste of home or a business owner reserving your name, you are joining a platform that has not yet said it is ready. You are taking a small act of faith in something built by this community, for this community. We think that deserves to be recognised permanently, so it is.

What founding members get

A status that never expires. Your account carries its founding member mark from the day we launch, forever. Years from now, when African Stores is simply how people find African businesses in Britain, your account will still say you were here before the doors opened. Nobody will ever be able to buy that mark, and we will never award it again.

First through the door. Founding members get access from the very first morning, with the whole platform ready for you while everyone else is still hearing about it.

Launch offers from the stores themselves. A group of participating stores are welcoming founding members with offers they have chosen and they control, a little off a first visit here, something extra with a purchase there. We want to be straight with you about how this works, because being straight with you is the whole brand: these offers come from the stores, funded by the stores, as their way of welcoming the people who showed up first. African Stores adds no strings and takes no cut. You show your founding member screen in the shop, and you are welcomed like the early believer you are.

A place in the queue that you control. Every founding member gets a personal link. Each friend who joins through it moves you up the list, so the people who help this community find its platform are the first to benefit from it. You will find your link the moment you sign up, and it is made for exactly one journey: from your thumb to your group chat.

Why it is never handed out twice

Some things are scarce because a marketing team decided they should be. This is not one of them. Founding membership is scarce by definition: it belongs to the people who joined before launch, and there is only one before launch. On the first of August the waitlist comes down, the doors open, and the chance to have been early ends the way all such chances end, quietly and permanently. We could invent a second wave, a founding member season two. We will not, because the moment a company reissues its history, the history stops meaning anything, and we intend for yours to mean something for a long time.

What it is not

No small print here, just clarity. Founding membership costs nothing and never will. It is not a paid tier, not a subscription, and not a commitment to anything. The offers are gifts from stores, not obligations on you. And if you join after launch, you will still be entirely welcome, you will simply be a member of something rather than a founder of it. Both are good. Only one is still available.

How to become one

Join the waitlist at africanstores.co.uk/waitlist. It takes about a minute. Shoppers tell us what they are looking for and where, business owners reserve their name before anyone else can. Then share your personal link with the one person who is always asking where to find things, because every friend you bring moves you up the list, and because platforms like this one grow the same way the news of a good shop has always travelled through our community: one person telling another, I found it.

The doors open on the first of August. Before then, there is a word for people like you. After, there never will be again.

Victor Ijomah is the founder of African Stores. Every article on this platform carries a named author and is reviewed before publication, as set out in our Editorial Principles.

That problem has not gone away. We hear it constantly from people who use African Stores. They find a shop on the directory, they make the trip, and the one thing they needed is not on the shelf. A wasted afternoon, and a wasted fare.

Finding home food should not depend on luck.

The directory fixed part of this. You can see which shops exist near you, wherever in the country you are. But knowing a shop exists is not the same as knowing it has what you need today.

So the next thing we are building is messaging. A way to ask a shop or a cook a simple question before you leave the house. Do you have this. Is it fresh. What time do you close.

It sounds small. It is not. For a lot of people it is the difference between a trip worth making and an afternoon lost. It also gives shop owners something they keep asking us for: a direct line to customers who are ready to buy.

We are testing it with a small group of shops first, so that when it opens, the people on the other end are real and ready to reply. Charles has written up exactly how it will work, and you can read that below.