Our Story

About
KikiBasket

We believe everyone deserves access to the foods that make them feel at home — no matter where home is.

Food is culture.
Culture is home.

For millions of immigrant families across the U.S., finding familiar ingredients can feel impossible — or just unaffordable. KikiBasket bridges that gap, mapping culturally relevant grocery stores and markets to your neighborhood so you can cook the meals that matter most.


We started as a simple map finder, and we're just getting started. Whether it's a digital marketplace, an AI-powered shopping guide, or a way to get your groceries delivered — KikiBasket will always be in your corner.

6+
Cultural cuisine categories supported
Free
Always free to use for families
SNAP & WIC
Eligible food program filtering

Your flavors, your community

From plantains to paneer — KikiBasket helps you find the ingredients your family's recipes call for.

🌽 Latin & Caribbean
🫚 African
🌶️ South Asian
🍜 East Asian
🥖 European
🫒 Middle Eastern
More coming soon…

Finding your groceries is easy

KikiBasket makes discovering nearby cultural grocery stores as simple as three steps.

01 📍

Enter your zip code

Type your zip code into the search bar to center the map on your neighborhood and nearby areas.

02 🎛️

Filter what matters

Choose your cuisine category, filter for SNAP or WIC-eligible stores, and set your convenience preferences.

03 🛒

Go shop & cook

Head to a store with confidence — with directions, ratings, and everything you need to find the right spot.

We support your food benefits

KikiBasket lets you filter grocery stores by the food assistance programs they accept — so your benefits stretch further at the stores that carry what you actually want to eat.

🟢 SNAP Eligible
🔵 WIC Accepted
🟠 Double Up Bucks
⚪ Senior FMNP

Born from a real need

KikiBasket was born from a simple frustration: why is it so hard to find the foods you grew up eating when you move to a new city?

We built KikiBasket to solve that problem — starting with a map tool to surface the grocery stores and markets that carry culturally relevant foods, filtered by your neighborhood, your budget, and your food benefits.

The vision is bigger than a map. We're building toward a future where immigrant families never have to compromise on the foods that connect them to their roots.

Isabella Peraertz, Founder of KikiBasket
Isabella Peraertz
Founder, KikiBasket
MSc. Sustainable Urban
Development
🎓 University of Oxford
🐯 Princeton University

A decade in tech: one conversation that changed everything

I spent 10 years cultivating a career in technology, working across products and teams while quietly searching for an urban development problem I was passionate enough to actually solve, and uniquely positioned to address. Something that sat at the intersection of cities, equity, and access.

The moment came during dissertation research for an MSc in Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Oxford. I was interviewing DC residents about navigating food deserts in the city, when a woman who had immigrated from Guyana living in Southeast DC stopped me in my tracks.

"It can take me two hours by bus to get to Silver Spring just to find the ingredients I need. I just wish I could know if there's somewhere closer." — Interview respondent, Washington DC (originally from Guyana)

She wasn't asking for anything complicated, she just wanted to find the foods that helped her feel at home. That felt like a solvable problem. And it felt unique enough to build.

Similar stories came from respondents from Ethiopia, Peru, and beyond: each describing the same quiet friction of searching for familiar ingredients in an unfamiliar city. KikiBasket is my attempt to build the tool they deserved to have all along.

Ready to find your groceries?

Search your zip code and discover culturally relevant stores near you — for free, always.

🗺️   Open the Map