A sneak peek at London’s new T&T Supermarket

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Making its foray into London’s burgeoning ethnic grocery store sector, Canada’s largest Asian supermarket chain is opening its newest location on Friday morning.

T&T Supermarket’s 3,620 square metre (39,000 square feet) location at the corner of Wonderland Road and Oxford Street marks the company’s 34th location in the country and will be the city’s largest Asian food store offering Londoners a wide range of unique products.

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“What’s very good about T&T is that people come to the store, not just for bananas and bok choy,” said media and communication manager Rachel Lin. “People often come almost like a destination of discovery, because you don’t only see the regular produce, like bananas, you also see very rare finds.”

Yes, T&T has the typical sections consumers can expect to find at a standard supermarket. There’s produce, meat, seafood, groceries, a bakery and a kitchen, but it carries numerous exotic items shoppers wouldn’t likely find at a local grocery store.

Some of the neatly stacked fruits and vegetables in the produce section are familiar. Others may appear familiar at first glance such as grapes, but with a closer look you realize these are shine muscat grapes from Korea that are much larger, or in the words of Lin nearly the size of “a ping pong ball.”

Everything is stocked and organized pristinely, whether it be the produce, the meats or items in the roughly 20 grocery aisles. For people less familiar with some products, such as the large stock of jackfruit, descriptions are laid out for unfamiliar customers. A species of tree in the fig, mulberry, and breadfruit family, jackfruit can weigh up to 55 kilograms.

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But, it’s store-wide consumers can find products – more than 10,000 are carried in-store – that aren’t commonly available at other grocery marts.

In one of T&T’s aisles, consumers can find “close to 30 flavors of Lay’s chips,” Lin said, pointing out flavours Londoners would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere such as kelp and salt, wasabi and squid and cucumber. Another aisle is dedicated to hot pot – an interactive meal where diners sit around a simmering pot of soup – an area that Lin called “a Disneyland for adults” if they were an Asian food lover familiar with the dish.

“What’s really different about T&T is that we have our own team that makes T&T bakery and T&T kitchen, and we also have a T&T private label,” Lin said.

The T&T kitchen makes food based on the season and sometimes a particular chef’s specialty and ready for takeout, which Lin encouraged customers to try if they are interested in experiencing Asian cuisine.

Headquartered in Richmond, B.C., T&T Supermarket was established in 1993 and has stores in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. The chain was bought by Loblaw in 2009.

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Lin said market research and online buzz pinpointed London as a prime location to open a store.

“We see the big customer space here,” she said, noting Tina Lee, the company’s chief executive, went to Western.

The “T&T,” initials have a double meaning. Tina and Tiffany are the names of founder Cinder Lee’s daughters as well as the initials of two early investors, according to the company’s website.

In recent years, London has seen a surge of ethnic grocery stores. The largest ones have moved into locations at malls and others have sprung up from scratch in stand-alone operations.

Like T&T Supermarket, many of the stores offer food staples and specialties tough to find at traditional stores and are favourites among established and newcomer ethnic communities to London, one of Ontario’s fastest-growing cities in recent years with an influx of new residents from the Toronto area and immigration from abroad.

Rival grocery corporation Metro is looking to get into London’s ethnic grocery store market when it opens a 4,200 square metre (45,000 square feet) Adonis location in the city’s south end in the summer of 2025. The Quebec-based supermarket specializes in Mediterranean and middle eastern food.

bwilliams@postmedia.com

@BrianWatLFPress

The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada

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