A shop that works to a boat timetable
Everything here follows from one fact: nothing arrives except on two mornings a week.
Twelve years of guessing right
Rukkuri Stores opened in 2014 in the front room of a house on Bodumagu and is now most of the ground floor.
A shop on an island is a forecasting job more than a selling job. Two cargo boats a week, a fixed amount of space on each, and a cold room that holds what it holds. Order too little of something and a hundred households go without it for four days. Order too much of the wrong thing and it sits there until it is thrown away, and on an island you cannot quietly move it to another branch.
So we learned to count. We know what the island buys in an ordinary week, what it buys in Ramadan, what it buys when the school term starts and what it stops buying when the weather turns and the fishing is poor. This website exists because it makes that counting far better: an order placed the day before the boat is a fact rather than a guess, and it means we bring the right amount.
What we will not do is put something on this site that we have not landed. The list here is shorter than a Malé supermarket's and every line on it is really in the building.
The family behind the counter
Ismail Rasheed
Opened the shop in 2014 and decides what goes on each boat. If something is missing from the island this week, he will tell you honestly why...
Aishath Nasheeda
Makes up the orders, keeps the school and guesthouse lists, and is the voice on the phone when your order is ready.
Mohamed Zahir
Meets the cargo boat, checks the load against the manifest and takes the rounds out in the afternoon.
Getting the order to you
Do you deliver around the island?
Yes. There are two rounds a day, one in the morning and one in the late afternoon, and you choose the one you want when you order. Each round takes a set number of orders.
Tell us the house name rather than a street. Everybody here navigates by house and so do we.
Can I collect instead?
Yes, and a good half of our orders are collected. Choose collection at checkout and we will hold the order at the counter with your name on it.
We hold it for two days. After that, anything frozen or fresh goes back into stock, because it is not safe or fair to leave it standing.
Can you send an order to another island?
To Hinnavaru, yes, on the ferry, and the charge is on the delivery page. Further than that we can put a crate on a boat going your way, and the cost depends on the boat rather than on us.
Ask before you order and we will tell you what it will be and when it would leave.
The counter is open until ten
Bodumagu, Naifaru. Every day except Friday morning, and not while the boat is being unloaded.