Three decades ago, Durham resident CC Chu said that there was only one place in the Triangle to get boba tea, a now very mainstream drink that originated in Taiwan.
"Grand Asia was, for the people who remember this, the first place and the only place for a while that you could get boba," Chu said.
Grand Asia Market, which opened in 1997 at South Hills Mall in Cary, was also the only store for many miles where one could grab a large variety of Asian vegetables, frozen fish balls, and other hot pot ingredients, or venture over to an in-house bakery that serves classic Chinese pastries, such as roast pork and pineapple buns.
In Durham, Chu's family would often shop at a small Asian mart they referred to as Xiao Ya Zhou, or "small Asia," in contrast to Da Ya Zhou, the Chinese name of Grand Asia. But the smaller store's inventory was limited, so roughly every month, they would drive a little farther to Grand Asia. It was also a place where her Chinese immigrant family didn't feel the pressure to assimilate.
"For my parents, being able to go into a space where they could speak their native tongue and not worry about having to do the translation thing in their brain, I think meant a lot," she said. "And I could see that ease and difference in the way that they operated in those spaces."
Like much of the United States, the Triangle's Asian grocery store landscape has grown significantly since the late 1990s, reflecting the area's rapidly growing Asian population. Families like Chu's went from having very few options to now being in proximity to more than a dozen stores 鈥� ranging from small mom and pops to larger supermarkets with food courts 鈥� that sell a variety of different Asian products.
And while Asian grocery stores make up a fairly small percentage of the , they've made a tremendous impact in broadening the American palette and expanding the international products of many supermarket chains.
Chu, 33, is the owner of The Bean Flower, a cafe that serves Asian drinks and desserts, which opened in Durham last fall. While the staff slings a fair amount of boba tea, its menu features items that are familiar to folks across the Asian diaspora, such as grass jelly, winter melon tea, the Chinese tofu pudding douhua 鈥� the literal translation of which the store is named after 鈥� and taho, a Philippine snack that contains silken tofu, sago pearls, and syrup.
"I think growing up as one of very few Asian kids in the South, I just never could have conceived of something like this," she said. "This type of place was something I would dream of going to when I would visit my cousins in L.A. So The Bean Flower was kind of my way saying like, hey, we're here and there's enough of us now that we can just make this our own thing."
Businesses like Asian grocery stores, as well as the Chinese family restaurants she grew up with, laid the foundation for shops like The Bean Flower to thrive, Chu said. The cafe sources much of its ingredients from Li Ming's Global Mart in Durham 鈥� sometimes buying out the store's entire stock of chrysanthemum to make syrup 鈥� as well as Grand Asia, Fresh International Market, Patel Brothers, local Asian farmers and other Asian American retailers, like Nguyen Coffee Supply.
"Having multiple options is pretty much the only reason that we're able to keep offering the things that are so authentic and nostalgic for a lot of us," Chu said.
Chain supermarkets follow the growth in the Triangle's Asian population
Around the same time that Grand Asia opened in Cary, the Indian grocery chain Patel Brothers also began serving largely South Asian customers in the area.
"Back in the day, we had so much family coming in and the stores were growing," said Umang Patel, the owner of the Cary location. "So everyone dispersed to different cities to open up grocery stores."
Patel's great uncles, Mafat and Tulsi Patel, founded the company in Chicago 50 years ago, which is now worth over $200 million and has 52 locations across the country.
When Umang Patel was 10 years old, he and his parents moved out of the Chicago suburbs to open a Patel Brothers behind Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh in 1996. Over the years, the store moved to a larger location in Cary. The growing Asian population in the area was simply what prompted the company to build a location in the Triangle, Patel said. Indians currently make up the largest portion of the Asian diaspora population living in North Carolina.
From the 2000s through the present, several Asian supermarkets established themselves in the Triangle. That includes Chinese and pan-Asian grocery A&C in Raleigh, which also runs Li Ming's Global Mart. In 2016, the popular Korean supermarket H Mart opened in Cary to fanfare. And more recently in 2023, Fresh International Market, a company that a Chinese immigrant founded in Michigan, opened a location near RDU International Airport.
The arrival of large chain stores is not only telling of a growing Asian population, but also the socioeconomic level of Asians moving into the area, said Eileen Chengyin Chow, a professor of Asian American and Diaspora Studies at Duke University.
"It's also an Asian population, whether it be student or working, that has spending capital, that it's a middle class population that (the stores) are serving," she said.
Asian American communities tend to develop in the suburbs, Chow noted, and that partly stems from a complex history following the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act; the policy allowed highly skilled and educated individuals, largely from Asian and Latin American countries, into the U.S.
Many Asian white collar workers brought family members with them to help raise children, Chow added. And those relatives would sometimes gather at food courts and cafes that are typically located within Asian supermarkets, a feature that differentiates them from other grocery stores.
"They had no community, so they would loiter in these food courts," she said. "If you went during a weekday to Li Ming or even H Mart, you'd meet a lot of grandmas with their grandchildren, wandering around."
After residing at South Hills Mall for nearly three decades, Grand Asia is likely moving to a new location. Raleigh developer Loden Properties purchased the property that contains the aging mall in 2021 and plan to convert it into a sports and recreation complex. Construction is expected to begin later this year.
Henry Ward, a partner at Loden Properties, told 吉彩网网站 in an email that the group offered Grand Asia the opportunity to remain there and anchor a potential "international food hall," but the store declined "and appear to be looking into other options."
Grand Asia's staff declined 吉彩网网站's request for an interview, saying in an email that its manager is out of the country for an indefinite period of time.
Smaller stores can lean into serving their communities
As more Asian grocery stores move into an area, Chow noted that these larger stores can edge out smaller shops. Shortly after moving to the Triangle 14 years ago, she recalled that walking into a small Taiwanese mart, located along U.S. Route 15-501 in Durham.
"One day I walked in and I heard (workers) saying, 'Well, I guess the new store is going to be really big and maybe it'll really hurt our business,'" she said. "Soon, I saw the old Circuit City that had closed down became Li Ming. And in fact within six months, the Taiwan mart closed."
However, some small stores have leaned in to serving their community. Filipino grocery Oriental Store along Capitol Boulevard in Raleigh has operated since the 1970s, and owner Mack Libago said was the first Asian grocery to open in North Carolina. The store also has a restaurant, Filipino Express, which serves dishes such as pancit, chicken adobo, lumpia, and halo halo.
"It's authentic Filipino food," he said. "We use Filipino herbs. Our soy sauce is different from other countries' soy sauce. It's a little bit stronger, saltier than Japanese and Chinese (brands). The taste of our food is not too extreme, not too spicy, not too sweet. Everyone can love it easily."
Libago, 58, worked as a former Coca-Cola salesman in the Philippines, then moved to the U.S. in 2001, living initially in Los Angeles. Finding living in California stressful, he moved to Raleigh to run Oriental Store in 2012, which was owned by his wife's aunt. Libago felt very motivated by the opportunity to run his own business and changed the inventory from largely pan-Asian products to mostly Philippine brands.
Walking around the store, he pointed at bags of snacks, cans of salted fish, and opened a fridge that contained blocks of Eden cheese.
"It's very popular in the Philippines and you cannot find it anywhere," he said.
Libago regularly calls his relatives in the Philippines and asks what people are eating there. Then, he'd seek out those brands and place orders on those products. Larger stores like H Mart don't have the flexibility that he has as a small business owner in deciding what to sell or his deep knowledge of Philippine products, Libago said.
And he said his strategy is working, since the Filipino population is growing 鈥� 鈥� and he sees many young Filipinos moving to the area on work visas.
"Especially if you are far away from home and you want to feel at home, like you are in the Philippines," he said. "My customers want to come here because of that."
If you are interested in this story, we'd like to hear about your memories with Asian grocery stores, questions and thoughts you have about their growth, and stories you think need to be told about Asian-owned businesses. Please reach out to elichen@wunc.org.
