Last year, Americans bought half a billion packages of Shin Ramyun, the spicy and beefy Korean instant noodle. The bold red and black packaging seems unavoidable: It’s a staple of college dorms, bodegas, mid-country Walmarts, and viral TikTok videos.
But 30 years ago, noodles were largely unknown in the United States. No grocery store would stock them, said Kevin Chang, chief marketing officer of Nongshim, Shin Ramyun’s parent company. Except for a few small Korean grocers, including a brand new store called H Mart in the Queens borough of New York.
In the 1970s and 1980s, as Asian immigration to the United States increased, grocers like H Mart; Patel Brothers, an Indian grocery store founded in Chicago; and 99 Ranch Market, initially focused on foods from China and Taiwan, began in Westminster, California, to meet demand for ingredients that tasted like home. These were tiny mom-and-pop shops located in suburban shopping centers or in outlying neighborhoods with large Asian immigrant populations. They weren’t luxurious, but they were vital to their communities.
Today, these same stores have transformed into sleekly designed chains with in-store roti machines, mobile ordering apps and locations across the country – all aimed at serving the fastest growing ethnic group in the world. United States and the millions of others who now crave flavors like Shin Ramyun, chili crisp, chaat masala and chai.
Today’s H Mart is a $2 billion company with 96 stores and an eponymous book, the best-selling memoir “Crying in H Mart,” by Michelle Zauner, a musician and writer raised in Eugene, Oregon. Last month, the chain purchased an entire shopping center in San Francisco for $37 million. Patel Brothers has 52 locations in 20 states, with six additional stores planned over the next two years. 99 Ranch opened four new locations last year, increasing its reach to 62 stores in 11 states. Weee!, an online Asian food store, is valued at $4.1 billion.
Both H Mart and 99 Ranch have stores in the Seattle area.
Asian grocery stores are no longer niche businesses: they are a cultural phenomenon.
Transforming specialties into must-haves
Despite their recent growth, Asian American grocers still represent less than 1% of the total U.S. grocery sector, which is dominated by retailers such as Kroger and Walmart, said Dymfke Kuijpers, senior partner at the consulting firm McKinsey specializing in retail. But those stores have an outsized impact, she said, because they dictate what products big-box chains stock.
Americans have become deeply enamored with Asian flavors: From April 2023 to April 2024, sales of items in the “Asian/ethnic aisle” in U.S. grocery stores grew nearly four times as much as overall sales, according to the company Circana data analysis tool. And more than any restaurant, cookbook or online video, it’s Asian grocers who are driving this change.
“They are at the forefront of integration,” said Errol Schweizer, vice president of grocery at Whole Foods Market from 2009 to 2016. Miso, ghee, turmeric, soy sauce — their journey to becoming Widely available pantry staples all started with an Asian grocer.
“Without Asian grocery stores, it is extremely difficult to access the mainstream market,” said Chang of Nongshim. They make ingredients that people grew up with, ate at restaurants or saw online, accessible, he said.
Brian Kwon, president of H Mart, said he’s used to seeing employees at large grocery stores come into one of his stores and note the brands available.
But H Mart also attracts customers from large grocery stores. Today, thirty percent of his buyers are non-Asian, Kwon said, and he has made changes to continue attracting them as the company expands into areas with smaller Asian populations — putting more emphasis on in-store tastings, explaining how ingredients are used and displaying signage. in Korean and English. Similarly, at 99 Ranch, announcements sound in Mandarin and English, and Western music has been added to the store’s playlists.
Swetal Patel, a partner at Patel Brothers, said that as the chain has expanded its audience — he estimates that 20 to 25 percent of shoppers are now non-South Asian — the stores now look more like Whole Foods, with wide aisles and glass. the Windows. “It’s not your mom and dad’s Indian grocery store anymore.”
This development was not welcomed by everyone.
Toral Dalal, a retired financial planner in Fulton, Md., said she frequented a small Indian store run by a husband-and-wife team that she befriended — until a Patel Brothers opened nearby in 2019 and the store closed in part because it couldn’t compete on price.
While shopping at Patel Brothers, she said, “It feels like a chore.” She very rarely buys anything new and she doesn’t know any store employees. “It’s impersonal.” She lamented: When did Indian grocery shopping become so corporate?
“The feeling of being at home”
Although many Asian grocers have adapted to their changing customer base, they insist that the communities that launched them remain a priority.
At the Dallas-based India Bazaar chain, for example, organic lentils are offered and bhakri is labeled gluten-free — tweaks that not only help attract non-South Asians, but also keep the store relevant to South Asians. Second generation Asians. , said Anuja Ranade, the director of operations.
South Asians will always be the priority, Ranade said, even if store design or product packaging might evolve.
“It’s about the feeling of home when they come into my store,” she said. The stores still smell of spices and the employees speak various South Asian dialects and wish customers a happy Diwali — because when you go to Walmart, they say, “Merry Christmas! Happy Thanksgiving!”
This authenticity is precisely the attraction for many non-Asian customers.
“I find it fascinating that there are things on the shelves that I have no idea what they are,” said Jill Connors, economic development director for the city of Dubuque, Iowa, who started shopping at Hornbill Asian Market this year because she and her husband became vegan and wanted high-quality tofu at a reasonable price.
The wide variety of foods to explore “brings more joy to the shopping and cooking process,” said Alexine Casanova, a nonprofit operations manager in Hamden, Conn., who shops at G Mart and Farmer’s India Market.
Sheil Shukla, who lives in the Chicago area and wrote the cookbook Plant-Based India, said the wide popularity of stores like Patel Brothers has given him more flexibility as a recipe developer.
“It didn’t make me shy away from using traditional ingredients,” he said. “If I made my cookbook 10 years ago, I probably wouldn’t have a recipe for garam masala because I wouldn’t think anyone would actually make it.”
These chains also paved the way for more regionalized Asian grocery stores, like the Taiwanese store Yun Hai in Brooklyn or Sua Superette, a Sichuan market in Los Angeles, both run by second-generation Asian Americans.
“We’re building on the work that previous people, like 99 Ranch, have done before,” said Lisa Cheng Smith, the founder of Yun Hai. “Without them, we would not be able to access this higher level of specialization. »
Many customers said they still miss the original stores — the humble community anchors where they hung out as kids, or that made them feel welcome during their first years in a new country .
But even as they grow, many of these grocers continue to function as third places, spaces for social gatherings. Mary Anne Hamper, a Filipino American genetics researcher in Queens, said she plans trips to H Mart with her Asian American friends; they make up for it by wandering the aisles looking for snacks.
Kat Lieu, the Seattle-based author of the cookbook “Modern Asian Baking at Home,” said the influx of non-Asian customers into these spaces doesn’t bother her.
“In an Asian grocery store, I feel like a queen,” she said. “If I see a white person confused, I’m like, ‘That’s the best soy sauce.’ »
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This story is part of a series about how Asian Americans are shaping American popular culture. The series is funded by a grant from the Asian American Foundation. The funders have no control over the selection and focus of articles or the editing process and do not review articles before publication. The New York Times retains full editorial control of this series.
