Three generations of palm growers. One promise: dates picked, packed and shipped the way they deserve — never the other way around.
How It Started
Datlji began the way most honest businesses do — with a problem nobody else was fixing. Our founder, Amira, spent every autumn of her childhood in her grandfather's palmery on the edge of the Tozeur oasis, where the same three families had tended the same rows of Deglet Nour palms for nearly a century.
Years later, working abroad, she found beautifully packaged "Tunisian dates" on a Paris grocery shelf — dry, flavorless, and priced at four times what her grandfather's grove had been paid for them. Somewhere between the palm and the shelf, the fruit had passed through five sets of hands, and every one of them had taken a cut except the people who grew it.
So she went home, sat with growers her family had known her whole life, and made a simple offer: ship directly, pay fairly, and let the dates speak for themselves. The first order was 40 kilograms, carried in suitcases to friends in three countries. Every box sold out within a week — almost entirely on word of mouth from people who couldn't believe a date was supposed to taste like that.
That trip became Datlji: a marketplace built to close the distance between the people who grow exceptional dates across North Africa and the Middle East, and the people who deserve to taste them at their best.
The Journey So Far
2019
A trip home to Tozeur turns into a question that won't go away: why does almost none of this value reach the people growing it?
2021
40kg of Deglet Nour, carried by hand to three countries, sells out in a week — entirely by word of mouth.
2023
The marketplace opens to growers across Tunisia, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, and to buyers around the world.
Today
Dozens of grower partnerships, tens of thousands of kilograms shipped, and a community of buyers who taste the difference.
What We Stand For
No chain of middlemen, no anonymous wholesalers. Every partnership is direct, so more of what you pay reaches the family who grew your dates.
Harvested, sorted and shipped on a schedule built around the fruit, not the calendar — so what arrives at your door still tastes freshly picked.
We work with growers who've spent generations perfecting a handful of varieties rather than mass-producing dozens — Medjool, Ajwa and Deglet Nour the way they're meant to taste.
Date palms have sustained desert communities for millennia. We back growers who irrigate responsibly, so that balance holds for the next generation.
By the Numbers
85+
Partner Growers
40+
Countries Served
2,400+
Happy Customers
3
Generations of Heritage
Taste It Yourself
Every order on Datlji is a direct line back to the grove it came from. Come taste what a date is supposed to taste like.
