‘One of the big missions you have as an immigrant is to help families back home. Through GroceryList, we turn remittances into commerce’ – GroceryList co-founder Jermain Morgan
The year was 2020, and the COVID pandemic was raging. Rory Richards was worried about his mom in Jamaica. She has asthma and couldn’t safely leave home to buy groceries. Jamaican stores didn’t offer online shopping or home delivery then. So, Richards teamed with a fellow Jamaican immigrant in South Florida to build that solution.
Six years later, their venture GroceryList has grown to provide more than online grocery shopping and delivery in the largest English-speaking nation in the Caribbean. GroceryList now lets customers buy from pharmacies, pet shops and other Jamaican businesses and pay utility bills online. It also supplies merchandise to Jamaican stores, buying from wholesalers in South Florida and delivering goods to shops across the island. In 2025, annual revenues exceeded $3 million for the first time, said co-founder Jermain Morgan.
“We built a logistic network so wide for Jamaica that we were the ones who brought food to the island after the hurricane,” Morgan said, referring to Hurricane Melissa, which hit western Jamaica in October 2025. Nonprofit groups tapped GroceryList’s fleet of trucks and its storage facilities to send essentials to citizens in need post-Melissa: “We coordinated logistics from the port to the warehouse to the people affected.”
Now, GroceryList aims to expand beyond Jamaica. It’s eyeing opportunity through store chains on the island that also serve other English-speaking Caribbean nations such as Guyana, Barbados, and Trinidad-Tobago. To fund expansion, it seeks to raise some $2 million in a pre-seed funding round, Morgan told Refresh Miami.
“We’re in a growth stage and very profitable,” said Morgan, who serves as chief operating officer. Revenue comes these days from an 8 percent service fee on orders and a $14 home delivery fee in Jamaica, he said. “Now, we’re looking for the right partner to scale.”
Morgan and CEO Richards had complementary backgrounds to launch GroceryList. Morgan has long worked in tech, building websites and other solutions for businesses. Richards had experience in food and beverage distribution in Jamaica. But starting out in the Fort Lauderdale area during a pandemic took persistence and lots of sweat equity.
The co-founders sought assistance from U.S. accelerator programs. In 2023, GroceryList was accepted in a TechStars program that provided $120,000 in funding, and in 2024, it was invited into the Morgan Stanley Inclusive Venture Lab that provided another $250,000, said the co-founder.
Backers see potential in the critical role that remittances play in Latin American and the Caribbean economies. In 2024, the region received more than $162 billion sent from abroad, with much of the cash buying basics like groceries. That total includes more than $17 billion for the Caribbean and $3 billion-plus to Jamaica alone, according to a recent report from the Inter-American Development Bank.
“One of the big missions you have as an immigrant is to help families back home,” said Morgan, who has long sent cash to his loved ones in Jamaica. “Through GroceryList, we turn remittances into commerce.”
South Florida, as a prime gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean, has emerged as a hub for tech ventures focused on remittances and e-commerce. One example: Fort Lauderdale-based Wynshop, an e-commerce platform for grocers, last year was acquired by shopping giant Instacart. Wynshop had staff in Ireland and Canada, among other nations.
Remittance firms active in South Florida today include Latin America’s Remitee and the UK’s Paysend. Miami’s OKY lets users send gift cards to stores in Latin America for recipients to pick up goods, to name a few.
Morgan said small, English-speaking Caribbean nations are often overlooked by tech firms focused on bigger markets. But opportunity abounds, because many retailers in those countries still don’t offer online shopping and delivery – like Jamaica back in 2020. “The Caribbean,” said Morgan, “we’d like to digitize it.”
Pictured at the top of this post: GroceryList co-founders Rory Richards (CEO), at left, and Jermain Morgan (COO), at right.
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
- How Miami became a launchpad for cross-border payment startups
- ATTRUS sets up in Miami to rethink how money moves globally
- Félix is turning WhatsApp into a remittance engine for 400,000+ immigrants
- OpenFX raises $94M on the premise that moving money should feel like sending a text
