The festive season isn’t the best of times to go grocery shopping. There are always loads of people who forgot to order anything online, plus folks who need to stock up for various events and parties. If you’re a Gauteng resident, there’s now another option when it comes to grocery delivery — Yassir Express.

Yassir Express is an unusual candidate for South Africans, though. While most grocery delivery apps include retail stores that you can visit if you wanna, this one consists of “dedicated dark stores”. In other words, you can’t ever enter the premises.

Taking the Yassir Express

But that might not matter too much. The service offering promises access to “everything from nappies and pharmacy items to pet food, fresh fruit and vegetables, and meat”, via a single app. That sounds like the sort of produce you can secure from Checkers or Pick n Pay or by combining a few different apps, but this one’s all mysterious.

More or less, anyway. Yassir as a company has been around since 2017, mostly in North Africa. The brand’s Gauteng launch marks its expansion into the southern part of the continent. It currently operates in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and other parts of Africa but it has its sights set on South Africa as well. The Gauteng launch is just the start. Cape Town and Durban are next on the list.

Yassir South Africa GM Timothy Kiluba said, “Rather than being limited to retail times, shoppers can also place their orders from as early as 6 am to 10 pm, and we do not place any limits on the number of items ordered or basket sizes, giving you the freedom to buy as many products from our catalogue as you would like.”

Delivery will apparently take place in 30 minutes or less, though that probably relies on your proximity to one of the company’s ‘dark’ warehouses. Yassir Express currently services parts of Johannesburg and Centurion. If you’re on the list below, you’ve got a new grocery shopping option to play with. Check it out here (Android, iOS).