Cerise

Growing the first online grocery powerhouse in Central Africa with an experienced franchise partner

Apr 14, 2026

Who is Cerise?

Cerise is the first true online grocery service in Gabon. It's a fast, digital-native storefront built on top of a 40-year-old family retail business that runs Carrefour Market franchise stores across the country.

After COVID, the need for e-commerce was impossible to ignore. But a traditional, established business isn't built to move quickly. So instead of fighting that inertia from the inside, the founders launched Cerise as a separate sister company, free to move fast and lead the digital front on its own terms.

The ambition was never just an online store. It was to prove that fast grocery e-commerce can work in a market where it barely existed, pairing the trust of the Carrefour brand with the convenience customers now expect.

A Pioneer in a Blue-Ocean Market

In 2026, e-commerce is still almost non-existent in Gabon. Where others saw an unproven market and waited, Cerise saw the chance to define online grocery and set the standard from the start.

Today:

First full online grocery experience in Gabon
Publicly launched in October, with sales roughly doubling month over month
Crossed 2,000 orders last month, on track for 3,000 this month
Projected 4,000 to 5,000 orders as new locations come online
Core customers: young mothers aged 35 to 45 (95% of the 6-month cohort)

This is how pioneering a category from day one, with the right operational backbone, turns an untested market into a repeatable growth engine.

Challenges: What They Faced

Launching Cerise meant building consumer habits, trust, and operations that simply didn't exist in the market yet.

Technology

Cerise started on Shopify but quickly hit its limits. A generic store platform wasn't built for fast grocery delivery, real-time inventory, and the complexity of scaling in an emerging market.

Operations

Fulfilling grocery orders fast meant solving picking, inventory accuracy, and delivery from scratch. In a market where fulfillment traditionally took 1 to 2 hours, not minutes.

Market & Trust

E-commerce was virtually unknown in Gabon. Customers traditionally preferred cash on delivery over digital payments, so building confidence in online ordering came first.

The challenge was not just launching a website, but creating an end-to-end operational model that could scale predictably from warehouse to customer.

The Solution: End-to-End Support with Native Commerce

Cerise chose Native Commerce for one reason: a specialized DNA in quick-commerce grocery delivery. Not a generic vendor, but a partner who had already run grocery e-commerce at scale. Native Commerce brought Cerise's website, warehouse, and delivery operations into a single system. That cut manual work, reduced errors, and gave the team real visibility into every part of the business.

Solution Highlights

Unified Commerce Platform

One system connecting storefront, inventory, and delivery, replacing the limits of an off-the-shelf store builder with a platform built for fast grocery.

Real-Time Inventory & Delivery Tracking

Live stock updates and delivery tracking that help avoid stockouts, reduce customer complaints, and keep operations tight as volume grows.

Operational Expertise

Hands-on guidance from a team that knows how to run a grocery business, from setup and training to adapting processes to the local market.

A Roadmap Partner

Responsive to Cerise's specific needs and product roadmap, adapting the platform as the business evolves.

Speed as the Moat

Cerise's core promise is speed: a 20-minute delivery window, versus the 1 to 2 hours customers were used to. The strategy draws directly from quick-commerce pioneers like Zepto and Blinkit in India.

Getting there is an operational challenge. Today, picking happens on the floor of physical stores, with 15,000 SKUs on the shelves and roughly 3.5 minutes per pick, slowed by in-store traffic and checkout queues.

The app carries a focused 4,000 to 6,000 SKU assortment, tuned for fast fulfillment rather than mirroring the entire store.

The Dark Store Transition

Built to get faster: the dark store transition

By the end of the year, Cerise plans to move fulfillment into dedicated dark stores. The projected impact is significant:

Picking time cut from 3.5 min → 1.5 min
Reduced ready-to-ship delays
Operating hours extended past the current 8 PM store closure
Roughly 8 minutes saved on overall delivery time

By designing the system to scale from day one, Cerise can add locations and volume without losing operational control, all from a single source of truth.