T&T Opens U.S. Grocery Flagship in Seattle’s Bellevue Neighborhood

When the information dropped in June that T&T could be opening a large U.S. flagship retailer in Seattle’s Bellevue mall, the Market at Factoria, seemingly the whole metropolis took discover. The huge, 76,000-square-foot house set inside a former Walmart opened on Thursday, December 5. It’s formally each the most important Asian grocer in Washington state, and, as T&T Supermarkets CEO Tina Lee informed Eater Seattle, it’s bigger than the entire chain’s 36 Canadian shops.

The massive motive to return in for the opening days, Lee says, are the offers. “How a lot would you pay for a bunch of inexperienced onions?” she asks, and solutions her personal query. “Throughout opening week, you’ll be shopping for 4 for $1.” If that doesn’t make eyes pop, how a couple of bag of avocados for $2.88, Napa cabbage for 68 cents, and Envy apples for $1.68 per pound.

The shop additionally has a personal label assortment of frozen, ready, and different gadgets that focuses on what Lee calls “Asian favourite merchandise.” A number of the high sellers embody steamed barbecue pork buns, inexperienced onion pancakes, frozen xiaolongbao that’s bought with a skinny strip of paper to steam it, and freeze-dried shiitake mushroom snacks that she suggests consuming as a alternative for potato chips. Amid the continuing contamination disaster within the U.S. meals system, Lee says T&T has a leg up.

T&T Grocery store

“What we’re identified for in Canada is meals security,” Lee says, noting that T&T will proceed to stick to Canadian Meals Inspection Company pointers, which dictate its manufacturing processes and people of its associate firms, and which she says are stricter than within the U.S. “We constructed a kitchen facility the place we make the ‘secret sauce…’ We’ve [made] it so that you simply principally have an inspector on-site [from the CFIA] full-time. We constructed them an workplace to permit them to be there any time to examine our processes so we are able to get merchandise from all throughout the provinces in Canada, however it’s additionally at export stage to assist the shop in Seattle.”

She notes that the corporate needed to get plugged into FDA procedures to function within the U.S., and can proceed to shortly and loudly make meals recollects when wanted. “You really hear T&T make recollects extra brazenly than different Chinese language grocers,” she says. “We’re a really clear enterprise, and I believe that’s been a part of our success, truthfully.”

T&T

Lee additionally sings the praises of the recent meals bar that she describes as an “Asian meals buffet,” which options a complete, butterflied fried hen. Employees within the retailer marinate and put together the meat for what they name the Papa crispy hen, which prices $15. She can be able to crown the shop’s barbecue pork, roast duck, and soy hen as town’s greatest. “We dedicated to utilizing pork that’s raised with out antibiotics,” Lee says. “[For all of these foods,] we stage up the uncooked substances and promote it for a worth that is the same as or cheaper than what’s on the market.” T&T may also promote a package to make Beijing duck, extra generally identified and labeled within the retailer as Peking duck.

The thought behind making groceries extra reasonably priced and specializing in greater high quality substances, Lee says, is to encourage clients to return for two- and three-time buying journeys through the week, slightly than the American behavior of doing one store per week. As some extent of reference, she talks in regards to the sliced white bread the shop makes in-house with out preservatives as a tangible instance of the corporate’s intention to clear the cabinets day by day in an effort to honor its dedication to making ready and promoting recent meals. “We don’t promote it on the second day,” Lee says including that some could also be packed right into a morning low cost tent. “It solely has a five-day shelf-life. Why? It’s solely 12 slices and we don’t need to add preservatives.”

“We’re so good on the on a regular basis recent [foods],” she says. “I believe there can be a little bit of a social experiment on how the T&T mannequin of an Asian recent market lands and hopefully succeeds in Bellevue. If it really works, it’s going to give us the arrogance to place out so many extra shops.”