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Company opens store in Piscataway, seeks to broaden customer base
The Asian Food Markets chain has opened a new flagship store in Piscataway. It replaces the Edison store, which closed after 18 years.
At the same time, the company is aiming to expand its customer base beyond those who once called Asia home.
The family business, founded in 1992, also has full service supermarkets in North Plainfield, Middletown, Plainsboro, Cherry Hill and Staten Island. The chain is known for its wide selection of fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, fresh meat, fresh poultry, fresh baked goods and Asian specialty products from many regions of China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia and India. The stores also offer authentic fresh, hot Chinese dishes, ready for takeout.
"This was a natural for us," said Anthony Chan, a vice president of Asian Food Markets. "The Edison location was our first store. It was aging, and not well. The new Piscataway store is brand new, brighter, more open, with bigger displays and much easier for shoppers to navigate."We're now in a mall where shoppers can get almost anything they want. There's a Wal-Mart, a Lowe's home improvement store, the Sports Authority and a few chain restaurants. With us in the mix, we complete this mall as a one-stop shopping location for nearly everything."
With the new market, has come an additional new direction for the company.
"For nearly two decades, our stores have smelled and felt like home to many of our customers," Chan explained. "We have many of the products you would find on the supermarket shelves in the home countries of our customers. These are things you can't find in stores of your usual supermarket chain. So, for new and recent immigrations, we have always been a comfortable place to shop. Plus, we usually speak their language.
"As immigrant families become more assimilated, we were still the culinary link to home. But now we have our eyes on a wider market. We know our product selection is eclectic and superior. We want all shoppers, of any ethnicity, to make Asian Food Markets a regular shopping location for so many of our fresh products. Then, we can entice them to try some of our special Asian products."
At many supermarkets, the fish is said to be fresh. Actually, many times it was frozen and customers see the defrosted version. At the Asian Food Markets, much of the seafood is still alive. Most of the Asian Food Markets' other seafood is fresh and has not yet seen a freezer.
Many of the special Asian baked goods are made in the store's bakery.
In most communities, specialty supermarkets are usually small mom and pop operations.
The Piscataway store is 22,000 square feet. And the products move.
In a single week, the Piscataway store sells:
- 8,000 pounds of fresh fish;
- 18,000 pounds of rice (jasmine, short grain, long grain, sweet rice, brown rice and basmati);
- 16,000 pounds of fresh vegetables;
- 13,000 pounds of fresh fruit;
- 7,000 fresh baked Asian buns.
Asian Food Markets is planning an Asian Food Festival this winter to help introduce different kinds of Asian products to a wider audience.
"We want to change the way the public looks at us," Chan explained. "Instead of being regarded as a supermarket for Asian people, we want to be considered a supermarket for everyone that specializes in fresh, quality products of all kinds, including specialty items from all over Asia."
– ANDY LAGOMARSINO, NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
