Hồng Phát opens its new supermarket at the former Walmart in Southeast Portland on Friday, filling a prominent storefront that has been vacant for 16 months.
The new store, at the Eastport Plaza shopping center on Southeast 82nd Avenue, opens its doors at 9 a.m. with a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring live music and a dance performance. Hồng Phát hopes to be more than a storefront – it hopes to become a community hub, with a network of satellite businesses leasing space in the building.
Hoang Nguyen, one of the masterminds behind the new Hồng Phát, said the Supercenter “is not just about groceries.”
“Our vision is to create a place where people in the local community can come together and hang out as well,” Nguyen said. “It’s a big space, and our thinking was that we could bring other small businesses in here and people can get their groceries, eat out and get a haircut all in one stop.”
Asian food emporiums are proliferating in the Portland area, snapping up retail spaces vacated by bigger brand names. The growth reflects the region’s changing demographics and a broader food palette enjoyed by Oregonians of all ethnic backgrounds.
“I think more people in general are interested in trying different types of foods,” said Tom Gilpatrick, a marketing professor at Portland State University.
Amanda Lai, food industry director at the Chicago-based retail consulting firm McMillanDoolittle, said another contributor to their growing popularity is pop culture and social media that expose shoppers to a dish or ingredient from an Asian grocer that goes viral.
“Even if Portland itself isn’t historically the most diverse, it certainly picks up on food trends,” Lai said. “So there is a growing interest, and our country is getting more diverse as a whole.”
The new Hồng Phát Supercenter boasts a colorful range of Asian foods and a wide selection of American, Latino, Eastern European and Middle Eastern groceries. The store also has a food court and a wholesale section for local restaurants and small grocers buying in bulk.
“We’ve got everything, and the store is kind of a new concept with both retail and wholesale, as well as a bit of cash and carry,” said Brandon Wang, founder and CEO of the small Portland chain. He said the new Hồng Phát is part residential Asian grocery store and part wholesale and restaurant supply distributor.
Customers can buy a range of quantities from single packets of Shin Ramyun – the spicy, beefy Korean instant noodle – to a 90-pound box of tenderloin, said Nguyen, Wang’s longtime friend and business partner.
Wang and Nguyen announced plans to transform the former Walmart into the fourth Hồng Phát’s location in January, after the two acquired the 154,000-square foot property for $20 million from the national retail giant.
Walmart sold the building after it shuttered the store in March 2023, saying that the location was underperforming.
Beyond the grocery store and wholesale foodservice, the Hồng Phát Supercenter will also sell clothing and jewelry and house an Asia travel and services agency and a beauty salon. Those are all in suites adjoining the main store within the building.
Wang said the grocery store itself occupies roughly 125,000 square feet of the property, while two restaurants (which he declined to identify but said are “well-known brands”) will take up about 20,000 square feet in the coming months. The remaining space has been leased out to various other tenants, he said.
Nguyen said the Supercenter has just over 200 workers but hopes to add a hundred more jobs when the two restaurants open. He said the goal is to eventually match or exceed the 379 that Walmart employed at the site.
Nguyen, a primary care physician who also operates a medical clinic less than a mile north of the new store, said he’s seen major retailers like Walmart, Fred Meyer and Safeway leave the area around Southeast 82nd Avenue over the years. He said his clinic and other small businesses have felt the impact of those closures.
“After Walmart left, we felt obligated to do something to help this community,” Nguyen said. “When you see 300 plus jobs gone and a store go away, that’s a big deal…We know it is risky to do something like this. But we thought it’d be worth the effort.”
Community ties
Wang was born in Vietnam and immigrated to Portland with his family when he was a kid in 1980. Growing up in Southeast Portland, Wang noticed a growing demand for Asian grocers but didn’t know he’d eventually play a role in filling that hole.
Wang said his background is in electrical engineering. He entered the grocery business after the engineering firm where he worked closed in 2002.
“The company I worked at basically shut down, but I had to keep working…I had a family with two kids to support,” he said. “I was looking to open any kind of business and I ultimately chose the grocery business.”
That’s when Wang decided to open his first Hồng Phát in the Parkrose neighborhood. The name of the store pays homage to Wang’s Vietnamese last name, “Hồng,” and Phát translates to “prosperity.”
Nguyen said Wang filled a need in the community when he opened up the first Hồng Phát store.
“He took that leap of faith and started a grocery business, when he didn’t know much about it,” Nguyen said. “But there was a need, he was in the community and well-connected, and he wanted to serve the community. Basically, that’s the thinking.”
In 2013, Wang and Nguyen partnered up and opened a second Hồng Phát location at a former Safeway on Southeast 82nd Avenue in the Montavilla neighborhood.
The company added its third store last summer at a former Albertsons in Tigard.
Nguyen attributes the company’s growth to its ties with the community and offerings that people can’t get at typical American supermarkets.
“Fred Meyer and Safeway might have 95% of everything, but there might be the 5% that they may never have,” he said. For example, Hồng Phát carries up to 30 different varieties and brands of rice and a large selection of noodles.
“You can’t get that selection at most stores around here,” Nguyen said.
Wang and Nguyen said they watched populations grow and diversify along Southeast 82nd Avenue and wanted to be intentional about making the store welcoming to various cultures.
“We continue to cater to the Asian communities, which is what got us started 20 years ago, but now we’ve expanded our customers in the community to include everybody,” Wang said. “I think it’s a more diversified selection.”
Having a diverse range of foods from a variety of cultures is one of the main ways independent grocers like Hong Phat differentiate themselves from the grocery behemoths like Walmart, Fred Meyer and Albertsons, according to Lai, the retail analyst from McMillanDoolittle.
“They can’t necessarily compete on price because they don’t have the economies of scale to offer the same prices as a Walmart or Costco could offer,” Lai said. “But there’s still space for ethnic grocery stores to exist side by side with more conventional traditional American grocery stores… because they fill a different need.”
Shifting demographics, evolving market trends
From 2010 to 2020, the number of Oregonians who identified as Asian grew nearly 38%. In Multnomah County, residents who identified as Asian grew 23% over the same time period, Census data shows.
The new Hồng Phát is one of several Asian markets that have opened in recent years in Portland. Southeast Portland already boasts Fubonn Shopping Center, Shun Fat Supermarket, H Mart and other, smaller Asian grocers.
Meanwhile, a new 99 Ranch Market is slated to open in the nearly 40,000-square-foot former Big Lots discount retailer near Mall 205.
According to market research firm IBISWorld, U.S. ethnic supermarkets’ revenue has grown to $57.6 billion over the past five years. And data analytics firm Circana reported that sales of items found in Asian or ethnic aisles in American grocery stores grew nearly four times faster than overall sales in the year leading up to April 2024.
Nguyen said the Asian population is one of the fastest growing groups in Oregon, “and so the demand for foods that taste like home is tremendous. But yet their needs are not being met.”
After Friday’s grand opening, the Hồng Phát Supercenter’s regular hours are from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
-- Kristine de Leon covers the retail industry, small business and data enterprise stories. Reach her at kdeleon@oregonian.com.
Our journalism needs your support. Subscribe today.
If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
