Owners of Viengchan Oriental Market in Brooklyn Park will reopen Cooper’s Foods location in St. Paul in October
In early October, the soon-to-be-shuttered Cooper’s Foods grocery store on West Seventh Street in St. Paul will reopen as a Southeast Asian grocery store, according to the real estate broker who connected the Cooper family with the family that runs Viengchan Oriental Market in Brooklyn Park.
“It’s good news,” said Santiago Padilla, a longtime resident of St. Paul’s West Side who goes to West Seventh to do his shopping. “I shop in Asian stores. They have good prices. »
The news, first reported this week by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, ends weeks of speculation from customers and employees, many of whom had treated the Asian grocer’s arrival as a fait accompli.
“It was an off-market transaction, so it wasn’t public,” said Hayden Husley, one of three commercial brokers who worked on the deal for RE/MAX Results as dual agents representing the Yang and Cooper families. Gary Cooper leased the store from the Yangs with plans to sell his remaining inventory this month, Husley said.
A 50% discount appears to have done the trick, leaving most grocery store shelves cleared Tuesday evening. The store will close on Thursday under the name Cooper’s and reopen around October 1 under the Viengchan brand.
The neighborhood is about 3 percent Asian, according to demographic reports, but several customers at Cooper’s said Tuesday that’s not a problem. Instead, they expressed relief at the prospect of continuity in an area with no other grocer within more than a mile.
“It feels good,” said Viola Seals, 89, a longtime Cooper customer, happy to hear that her neighborhood grocer would survive, even with changes.
“I think it’s really important that the community has access to fresh, affordable food,” said Meg Duhr, board president of the West Seventh/Fort Road Federation. “I hope it’s successful. Without it, West Seventh is truly something of a food desert. There are a lot of people who don’t have cars in the neighborhood, a lot of elderly people. …It will be interesting to see.
A Hmong family business
The brokers — including Mark Husley and Doug Harris — helped the owners of Viengchan Oriental Market acquire their property in Brooklyn Park a few years ago, then buy the Cooper’s store at 633 W. Seventh St., which serves West Seventh Street. community near the High Bridge since the 1990s. A call to the Brooklyn Park site was not immediately returned.
The market’s website promotes Thai, Laotian and Hmong cuisine, but after minor construction it will likely open in the fall with grocery offerings also aimed at longtime customers.
“I think this store will have more of an American feel, to keep Cooper’s customers,” Hayden Husley said.
He said the buyer – who he identified only as the Yang family – released the following statement:
“We are a Hmong owned and operated family business. With the high concentration of Hmong and Asians in and around the Twin Cities areas as well as the growing popularity of certain Asian goods and cuisines, our goal is to expand our services in the area to meet the needs and demands of our community . We hope and believe that we will bring more than just a market to the region, but we will bring with us new energy and new experiences. The goal is not just to serve the Asian community, but the community as a whole. We would love to have local support from neighboring communities and continue to serve you all.
New owners
St. Paul City Council member Rebecca Noecker said she has had no personal interactions with the new owners. But Noecker – a West Side resident – said she was relieved the neighborhood could sustain a grocery store. Otherwise, the closest Mississippi Market and Lunds & Byerlys grocery stores are over 1.5 miles in either direction.
“A lot of people from the West Side head to West Seventh because it’s the closest grocery store they have,” she said.
Five generations of Coopers have stocked groceries at two locations along West Seventh Street and in the more than century-old Chaska family store.
The Highland Park location of Cooper’s Foods in the Sibley Plaza shopping center closed in 2017, although an Aldi supermarket has since opened there. The 107-year-old Chaska store closed in early March, with Gary Cooper citing competition from big box stores at the time.
On Tuesday, Gary Cooper didn’t have much to say about next steps.
“Why don’t you just wait and see what happens?” Cooper said in a brief telephone interview. “I don’t know what the people who bought the building want to do. Next week, they’ll be in the building. Talk to them.”
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