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Comment by creaghpatr | Hacker News Reader

>From the beginning, it was important to her that the stores were clean, modern and easy to navigate, to defy the stereotype of Asian groceries as grimy and run-down.

>To be welcoming to non-Koreans, H Mart puts up signs in English. At the same time, the younger Mr. Kwon said, “We don’t want to be the gentrified store.” So while some non-Asians recoil from the tanks of lobsters, the Kwons are committed to offering live seafood.

I grew up in Georgia and H Mart definitely changed the game with this strategy. They make it very accessible for someone who is unfamiliar with international grocery stores to come in and explore without feeling culturally intrusive. I speculate that H Mart and their food courts were the gateway drug to Korean food becoming a huge cuisine in Metro Atlanta as they were the first big brand in the game that I became aware of.

Edit: Also shout-out to Chai Pani, definitely hit that place up if you are ever in Decatur.

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>"without feeling culturally intrusive"?

What does that mean? When I'm overseas and I go to a "Western" supermarket that has western goods/brands that are very atypical to that in local supermarkets, the locals that shop there I am absolutely sure, don't feel they are being "culturally intrusive". The supermarket is there to SELL... They don't give a rats ass who comes in to make a purchase and I, as a western visitor, also did not see it as "cultural intrusion" when locals shop in these western supermarkets. The idea never entered my mind.

I like H Mart, by the way and I like the Japanese supers too.

If you go to an "old-school" Asian grocer, the shelves are packed to the rafters, there's essentially no signage in English, and you can't help but feel like you're getting in the way of the regulars. This feels much less welcoming, while an H Mart style place that's laid out and brightly lit like a "regular" supermarket is much more conducive to exploration.

I don't know. You're just another shopper to them. The shopkeeper wants turnover, no matter who you are. Sure, they will look out for shoplifters more than regular supermarkets because their margins are even thinner, but if you become recognizable (patronizing semi regularly) no one will care. They may at first have some slight trepidation about returns (you buying something not knowing what it is), but if you become even semi regular, you're just another shopper.

I fee like this is a bit of weird "Othering" but dressed up in some weird sense of correctness.

I'm not saying the grocer doesn't want you there -- I'm saying you feel like you're literally in the way (as in, physically blocking the aisle) if you stand around the snack aisle scratching your head, while the regulars are making a beeline for the fish sauce and packs of mala tofu skin.

> I fee like this is a bit of weird "Othering" but dressed up in some weird sense of correctness.

Respectfully, you may be overthinking it. If you take it at face value, this is simply a business designing their retail experience with new customers in mind.

This isn't a "political correctness" thing. People new to serious comic book stores, stone and gravel retailers, etc. can easily feel overwhelmed and a bit lost in the same way.

I get the H Mart strategy. What I don’t quite understand is the feeling of “cultural intrusion”.

Ok I can feel cramped. Where or how does cultural intrusion enter the picture?

Is that like trying to sit with the jocks at the lunch table in high school and they look at you weird like you’re intruding their culture?

I don’t like the phrase either, but I wonder if it wasn’t meant to be more benign.. as in, you go to a grocery store catering to locals of another culture, and you walk up and down the aisle, you don’t understand any of the packaging, and you can get the sense that if you laugh or have a “thats weird food” reaction to any of it, that’d be rude, so you hold it in.

I grew up as the child of east European immigrants, and growing up we’d always had our own stores to buy food from the homeland. They’re gone, for the most part, but I can walk into most Russian grocery stores and get what I want, but I don’t understand most of the Russian options. Asking about some of the foods can lead to a strained or confusing conversation.

I am an Asian and I feel the cultural intrusion if I go to a different kind of Asian store.

They don't look at you weird. You just feel it.

My analogy would be wearing shoes inside a house when they typically don't wear.

They're not talking being judged by the employees. They're talking being judged by the other shoppers.

Imagine being a foreign tourist to America, going into a middle-American Wal-Mart — one far away from places where any tourists would ever bother to visit. Some American dudebro wandering through the aisle asks you a question (in English), and then gets pissed off when they realize that you don't speak English, and starts berating you and wondering out loud what his town is coming to.

The social-anxiety expectation for the experience of shopping in a small neighbourhood ethnic grocery store, is the projected reverse of that: the shoppers there seeing you there bumbling about, unable to pronounce any of the names of the items, and responding by wondering angrily in $language what their district-of-the-town is coming to, i.e. when their nice little ethnic enclave community got so gentrified/whitewashed that "people like that" started showing up.

(Despite being white, it's the racist American dudebro part of this that I've experienced before, second-hand, while taking my (non-white) partner on a trip to show them a more-rural area I used to live in. That was an experience I don't want to repeat.)

“ you can't help but feel like you're getting in the way of the regulars.”

I usually get treated as a funny curiosity in Thai and Indian stores. The feeling of being intrusive or in the way is self imposed. I don’t get annoyed at Asian people in Western stores either.

It surprises me how lenient the US is about American business not providing English signage. Wouldn’t this be considered a form of discrimination? I’m sure that if a German grocery store were to open in Paris with only German signage there would be an outrage.

The US doesn't have an official language, nothing preventing anyone from running a store using only Lojban if they wanted.

The long hand of the market takes care of this. If you want to hire only people that speak French and hang up only signage in French in a city with 99.9% English speakers, there are dozens of middle men with their hand out eager to help you get set up. Staying open is your business not theirs.

> US is about American business not providing English signage.

Why would they? English doesn't have a legally protected status.

Food labels, especially nutritional data and the list of ingredients must have at least an English translation. So even if the signage doesn't have to be in English, you can look at the nutrition label on the back for some clue.

Some local jurisdictions do require translations on signs. The City of Doraville in metro Atlanta has a high Asian population and stores are required to have an English translation for their signs.

There are still places like that in SF's Chinatown. There's enough customer density to support a walk-in market that doesn't use shopping carts. SF's Chinatown has twice the population density of SF. And a median age of 47, almost 10 years higher than the rest of SF. So there are still old-school Asian grocery stores.

Nijya Market has a number of good Japanese grocery stores in the SF bay area. They're rather expensive, like Whole Foods. Noted for fresh fish and sushi. Also, they have the good Pocky, from Japan, not the made-in-Thailand stuff. Their stores are small supermarkets, with carts and parking.

SF's Chinatown is stuck in the 1950s. Where are the black-glass buildings, the fast forward fashion from Beijing, the automated stores, and the latest parts from Shenzhen? They're in Cupertino, home of Apple, which is 67% Asian and has entire malls of good Asian stores. The big mall across the street from the Apple mothership is a good place to start.

I prefer the 1950s style, the produce isn't wrapped to death in plastic. My general rule is that the more plastic it has, the further away it was produced. The small Asian places have their own farm pipeline for the specialty vegetables, not industrial scale farms like from a Safeway. I cannot resist the allure of Nijiya, though, as they will have veggies and fruits that nobody else has.

> The supermarket is there to SELL... They don't give a rats ass ...

Which supermarket are you talking about? And how do you know what they think? I think we are applying economic theory, in which there arguably shouldn't be prejudice, to reality, where there is lots of prejudice:

Businesses have a long history of giving rats asses and much more about who their clientele is, demographically, ethnically, racially, socially, etc., and IME and in many public examples, many still do. I've seen discrimination, subtle and overt, against people who are young, old, rich, poor, black, brown, fashionable or not, speaking a different language, etc. etc. etc.

This whole thread, if you read it, is about H Mart and by proxy other Asian supermarkets in North America.

When I said 'what supermarket are you talking about', I meant that the GGP was describing someone's thinking - what is their name?

Humans are individuals with their own thoughts. Attributing thinking to a large mass of people doesn't make sense, in my way of thinking.

Those that have been to a chinese grocery store in California know they sell all sorts of exotic delights that could cause a newcomer laugh, point, or say "ew" aloud.

?? That’s a non-sequitur.

I’m sure if this person feels that just walking in is “culturally intrusive”, then, if they walked in they’d behave like an adult and that would be beside the point?

And also the Buford Hwy Farmers market which still manages to have an impressive array of Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Caribbean, Mexican, Eastern European and even some Western European goods.

You can buy an entire goat at the Buford Highway farmers market. The scale of that place has to be seen to be believed.

Your Dekalb Farmers Market is still the best :)

Meh, YDFM is a little bit more of a farmers market, but neither it nor BuHiFM are farmers markets they're both grocery stores and YDFM doesn't have anywhere near the international selections.

The real, actual farmers market is the Atlanta State Farmers market in Forest Park and it's one of the largest and most active in the US.

My guess is the 'Farmers Market' in the names is just marketing/branding to get shoppers to associate it with fresh produce, like Harry's Farmers Market before they turned into Whole Foods.

Is there anything like BuHi Farmers Market anywhere else in the US?

I've been to LA, NY, Boston, SF and haven't seen anything closely like it. H Mart's probably the closest thing and it doesn't compare in any way

Some people brag about knowing which bodega to go to buy Mexican Coca-Cola but people who shop at BHFM know they can easily get Nigerian Coca-Cola and half a dozen other country's local variant. One of these days I'm going to take my friend's daughter who loves noodle bowls down there just to blow her mind on the aisle of noodle bowls.

Was H-mart around before the Buford Highway Farmers market? I went there for years before I ever saw an H-Mart and it was very inviting, but maybe H-mart was around and I just didn't know it.

Also to add, growing up in Georgia I feel like every grocery store I went in had a tank of live lobsters. Even Red lobster had that, so I don't see why they think non-asian's would recoil from that.

Yeah I didn't understand that part, specifically with lobsters because every grocery store has lobsters in my experience. I think Buford has been around longer but H Mart made it into the suburbs/ OTP area.

Thumbs up for Chai Pani, I was really sad when they discontinued their packaged/frozen food for home a few months ago, was great to have their curries in the freezer and ready to go in the same amount of time it took to cook some rice.

How does H-Mart compare to Ranch 99? I've never thought of Ranch 99 as a "grimy and run-down". They're huge and clean and brightly lit.

H-Mart is a bit upmarket from Ranch 99, but I think they both have similar welcoming-to-everyone vibes.

H-Mart is more Korean focused, whereas Ranch 99 is more Chinese.

The part about live seafood is strange. Major grocery stores have live lobsters all the time.

Live fish tanks, less so.

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