Our Story: From Turkish Market Stalls to UAE Doorsteps

It Starts With the Breakfast Table

There is a ritual that defines Turkish mornings. The table takes shape slowly: white cheese crumbled onto a small plate, olives beside it, a dish of kaymak next to the honey jar, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, a pan of menemen warm from the stove, and at the centre of everything, a glass of strong cay poured from a double teapot. No rush. No shortcuts. The table is the point, not the prelude to something else.

For Turkish families living in the UAE, building that table used to require a compromise. The right cheese was hard to find. The specific brands people grew up with were often difficult to find. The olives were there, but not those olives.

Old Bazaar General Trading LLC was founded in Dubai in 2010 to change that. What began as a wholesale operation importing Turkish food and beverage products into the UAE grew into something more personal: a direct connection between Turkey's most established food producers and the community in the UAE that knew exactly what authentic meant.

The Gap We Saw

By the mid-2010s, the Turkish community across Dubai and the UAE was growing, and demand for authentic Turkish products was rising. Not just from Turkish expats, but from the broader food-loving community that had encountered Turkish cuisine through travel, restaurants, and a growing appreciation of Eastern Mediterranean food culture.

The problem wasn't desire. It was availability. General supermarkets carried fragments. The selection was inconsistent, the quality variable, and the experience of crossing three stores for one meal's worth of ingredients was exhausting.

In February 2017, we launched Bakkal.ae.

What We Built

Bakkal.ae was created as a dedicated online Turkish supermarket serving customers across the UAE. Not a general Middle Eastern grocery with a Turkish section. Not a marketplace that lists whatever is available. A curated, specialist store built around a single mission: making authentic Turkish ingredients properly accessible in the UAE.

We focused on bringing well-known Turkish brands across tea, coffee, dairy, olives, confectionery, and delicatessen products: names like Caykur, Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi, and Itimat, each with serious reputations built over decades in Turkey. Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi alone has been roasting coffee in Istanbul's Spice Bazaar since 1871, and is now available for same-day delivery across the UAE.

We built our own delivery infrastructure alongside it. Temperature-controlled vehicles handle fresh and chilled products, because dairy, cheese, and cold cuts require cold-chain handling. Our own team manages every delivery, because we take responsibility for what arrives at your door.

Where We Are Today

Bakkal.ae now covers a wide range of Turkish daily life: breakfast essentials, fresh produce, bakery and pastry, dairy, cold cuts, pantry staples, beverages, and specialty items. The app makes the weekly shop simple. Free delivery on orders above AED 105 keeps regular shopping practical.

But the mission hasn't changed from the pallets of Turkish products that arrived in Dubai in 2010. The Turkish breakfast table deserves to be set properly. Turkish home cooking deserves the right ingredients. Our goal is simply to make authentic Turkish products easier to access across the UAE.

That's what Bakkal.ae is.