African Choice Food Market — Local services in Orlando

Changing my star from 2+ years ago from 5 stars to 1 in 2023. Can't even remember why I gave them a blank 5-star rating back then.

TL;DR: Go to Caribbean Supercenter down the road instead since they have a whole isle dedicated to Nigerian/West African food ingredients that decimates this entire store's selection.

The place was good (albeit unpolished) the first time I visited back in 2020, but I'm realizing that was my individual experience. Unless you plan on checking out a lot of food, the owners will be cold and crusty as hell with you. The woman was really rude to my mom the first time I visited with my parents back in 2021. She was very put off by her conduct, but unfortunately, for the ingredients they needed, there was no other option (or at least Caribbean Supercenter's selection of African goods was less robust than now). Apparently, she was all friendly and nice the one time my mom came by herself (while she was doing travel work in the vicinity in 2021) and bought a lot of stuff to the point the woman offered her a free drink. Phony friendliness if I can describe this in a word.

Fast forward to 2023, we go to the Caribbean Supercenter BEFORE here just because we were reluctant to step foot in this crusty establishment. We are so glad they did since they had everything BUT ogbono soup ingredients available (they were out of stock, but carry it). We grudgingly went here since my folks needed the ogbono. The store is still small, dirty, and in disarray; they still sell marked up Great Value products; they still don't label most of their prices. In the end, we left buying a scarce few items, but probably got made up prices that were "itemized" without any of the product names on the receipt! Of course, they pretended like they don't remember us (which is fine) and feigned friendliness. Never again...

The man inside the store was EXTREMELY RUDE to the point where he started ignoring me until I purchased a product…the store is completely run down and over priced. This business is giving undercover business as a tax write off cause there’s no way this small business gets foot traffic. The shelves are dirty the store looks ran down and everything in the dirty freezer is freezer burned. Prior to purchasing my product I also asked what was the price of the item which is kept behind the counter, upon hearing the price of an item that is 10 dollars online for 25 my jaw dropped but I’m paying for convenience at this point , he said If I’m not going to buy it why I’m still here I can go purchase it online…. This is within 5 minutes of me being in his store .personally I would have left after he said that but I need the product . I said is that tax included he said yes , once I paid he said oh 99 cents …. So it went from 25.00 to 25.99 lol this place is a scam and a joke and yes I still gave up my 1 dollar but this is my first and last time coming into the store. Plus a small bag of cassava flower is 6 dollars in the store excluding tax, better off going to the Caribbean super market down the road. Upon reading everyone else review after writing it all makes sense now. Literally 80% of the reviews say the same exact thing from the store being run down expensive rude employees and fake prices. I’m extremely glad I came in pajamas and not my work attire , they probably would have charged me 50$ for a bottle. Guys this is not a real store go to the Caribbean market...

Avoid going to this store. The customer service is so poor. The man at the store was very rude when I was at the store last week. A friend asked me to help pick up a bag of gari Ijebu at the store. I looked for it on the shelves and all I saw was Ghana gari. I asked the man if they have gari Ijebu, he said yes, they have it. I told him I could not find it and asked for his assistance. The man literarily went off and started shout, “read the label, it’s there, read it”. I told him I already looked and could not find the gari Ijebu. He started shouting the same “read the label”. At that point I told him, he needs to undergo customer service training. It would’ve taken 10-20 seconds of his time to point out the gari Ijebu. I left the store and went to the Caribbean Supermarket down the road to purchase the gari. I wanted to patronize this store because they are from Africa. It is safe to say, I will never return to this...