The stores that feed the neighbourhood — and carry it too.
Somali grocers in Minneapolis, Columbus, Seattle and Toronto give credit on trust, written in a notebook by the register — some of these shops have done it since they opened. These are the owners who moved that trust off paper, in their own words and with their own numbers.
Every store on this page gave us permission to use their name, their city and their figures. Nothing here is an average or an estimate.
Barwaaqo Halal Market
Abdirahman Yusuf
Thirteen years of paper, and he still could not say what he was owed.
Abdirahman Yusuf has run Barwaaqo Halal Market on Cedar Avenue since 2011. Meat counter at the back, rice and xawaash by the door, and three spiral notebooks beside the register holding every dollar his regulars owed him. Names in blue ink. Amounts squeezed into the margin. Some entries written by a cousin covering the evening shift, in handwriting nobody else could read.
The notebooks cost him in ways he never wrote down. A customer would insist he had settled up back in Ramadan, and Abdirahman had no way to show otherwise — so he let it go, because the man prays at his mosque. Pages got wet. One book went missing when he changed the counter. By the end of 2023 he had stopped trying to add it up. He guessed six thousand dollars, and quietly wrote most of it off.
He signed up on a Tuesday in February. Over two evenings after closing he photographed all three notebooks page by page and sent them in; his 148 accounts were on the system before the weekend was out. The only thing he had to correct was a surname his cousin had spelled two different ways. That Friday at 9:00 AM he sent his first batch of xasuusin — 61 text messages in Somali, each one showing that customer’s own balance and nothing else. No phone calls. Nobody asked for money at the counter in front of their neighbours.
Nine people paid that afternoon. By the end of the month he had collected $4,200 he had already given up on. The notebooks are still under the counter — he keeps them there, he says, so he remembers.
“I used to keep three notebooks and still lose track. Now I open my phone and I know exactly who owes me what. In the first month I collected $4,200 that I had written off in my head.”
$4,200
Recovered in month one
Balances he had already given up on, collected in 31 days.
5 hrs
Back every week
Sunday evenings with the notebook are over.
21 → 6
Accounts more than 30 days behind
Out of his 148. Those fifteen are where most of the $4,200 came from.
Three more owners, three different reasons they stopped writing things down.
A meat counter in Columbus, a manager in Toronto tired of arguing about receipts, a son in Seattle who wanted his weekends back. Same notebook problem, different corner of it.
“The text reminders changed everything. Before, I had to call people and it felt like begging. Now the message goes out Friday morning and by Saturday half the balances are paid.”
Fadumo Hassan
“When a customer says "I already paid that," I show them the receipt with the date and time. No more arguments at the counter. That alone was worth the money.”
Sagal Warsame
“My son used to do the books on the weekend. It took him five hours. Now it takes ten minutes and he actually comes to visit instead of working.”
Mohamed Nur
What it adds up to across all 120 stores.
Pulled from DeynBook accounts on 30 June 2026. Store owners can see the same figures for their own shop in Reports.
120
Independent stores keep their deyn book here
Independent halal markets in the United States and Canada. No chains, no franchises, and small enough that we know them by name.
$1.4M
Of customer credit tracked on it
The credit sitting on DeynBook ledgers right now — money owed to shopkeepers, tracked to the cent.
6 in 10
Reminded balances paid within two days
Measured across the reminders our stores sent in Somali and English over the last year — about six in ten of those balances were settled inside two days.
5 hrs
A week back from doing the books
Owners used to lose an evening a week to the books. Most now finish before the shaah goes cold.
Where the 120 stores are.
DeynBook spread the way everything does in this community — one owner telling another after Jumu’ah. It has not spread far: eight metros in the United States and Canada, and we know most of these shops by name.
We do not publish a map of our customers. Their balances are their business. This is just where the shops are, and how many of them — every store we have, counted.
8
Cleveland & Cincinnati
7
Ottawa & Edmonton
That is 114 stores on the cards above. The other 6 are single shops in smaller towns — Lewiston, Rochester, Winnipeg and a few like them — which makes 120 in all.
Put your store on this page next year.
Start with the customers who owe you the most. By Friday you can send your first reminders and stop carrying the number in your head.
- Send photos of your pages. We type in the balances for you.
- Most stores are fully moved over in two business days.
- Month to month. Cancel from your settings, no phone call.