Why Long Island's ethnic grocery stores are growing so fast

Doughnuts and pizza have been good businesses for Mohinder Pal Singh.

He owns 17 Dunkin' and two Pizza Hut franchises on Long Island, but he’s ready to achieve a "long-term dream" by taking on a new type of entrepreneurship: grocery store owner.

He will open Sanjha Bazaar, a South Asian grocery store, in Commack by early October. A native of India who immigrated to the United States nearly 40 years ago, Singh is opening the 19,351-square-foot store partly in response to the growing South Asian community on Long Island, he said.

"So, if there is more population, of course, their needs have to be catered to. So that’s why it’s a good match between giving people service and at the same time a good business project," he said.

The shifting ethnic demographics on Long Island and nationwide — the fastest-growing populations are Asian and Hispanic groups — are helping to spur increases in the number of ethnic grocery stores and sales of ethnic foods at grocery stores in general, retail experts said. 

"We’re just seeing people from all over the world coming to the country, and they’re looking for products they’re used to and that possibly they grew up with. And it makes country of origin extremely important," said grocery industry expert Jon Hauptman, founder of Price Dimensions LLC, a Chicago-based provider of pricing analytics to grocers.

On Long Island, ethnic grocers that have opened in the past five years include Hanamaru Japanese Mart, which opened in Syosset in 2019, and Hispanic-format supermarket Compare Foods, which opened in Brentwood in 2022.

Also, California-based Asian grocery retailer 99 Ranch Market opened its first store in New York State at the Samanea New York mall in Westbury in 2022; Asian grocer Shop Fresh opened in New Hyde Park in March 2023; Sanjha Punjab Supermarket, an Indian grocer, opened in Elmont in December; Lami African Market opened in Lynbrook in March; and Akal Supermarket, which specializes in Indian food, opened in Islip Terrace in April.

The two brothers who operate the Compare Foods in Brentwood plan to open another Hispanic-format store, Compare Fresh, near the Hempstead LIRR next summer.

Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace, a Melville-based, high-end Italian specialty grocer with 11 supermarkets in New York and New Jersey, will open a store in Greenvale in the first quarter of 2026. The grocer's newest Long Island store opened in North Babylon in 2020.

Another factor in the growing demand for ethnic foods is that U.S.-born consumers, especially young people, are more willing to try new foods than generations of the past, retail experts said.

They are picking up everything from Indian lentils, curry and samosas; to Japanese rice and udon, which are noodles made from wheat flour; to Mexican tamales and skirt steak for carne asada; to ackee and salt fish, which is Jamaica’s national dish, made by sautéing ackee fruit and salted codfish with peppers and spices.

Nationwide, ethnic grocers account for a small percentage of all grocery sales, so they do not pose a major threat to mainstream grocers, retail experts said. But in today’s increasingly competitive grocery landscape, traditional grocers are fighting harder for every consumer dollar — and expanding their international offerings.

"Food retailers will follow the dollars. Ethnic foods often contribute positively to a grocer's bottom line due to their higher gross margins compared with non-ethnic foods. They also offer a key point of differentiation [among grocers] that goes beyond price, which is critical given shoppers’ inflationary mindset," said Douglas Madenberg, principal at The Feedback Group, a grocery retailing consultancy based in Lake Success.

In 2022, an estimated 560,086 foreign-born residents lived on Long Island, a 41% increase from the 396,939 in the 2000 decennial count, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Foreign-born residents accounted for 19.3% of Long Island's 2.9 million residents in 2022, compared with 14% of 2.8 million residents in 2000.

Among the regions accounting for the largest share of Long Island's foreign-born residents in 2022 were Central America, 20.5%; the Caribbean, 17.7%; South America, 15.8%, and South Central Asia, 12.3%.

New tastes

Lawrence Wang and his family own Hanamaru Japanese Mart, which includes a restaurant and 20-seat dining area where customers can eat prepared foods, such as sushi, ramen and steamed shrimp dumplings.

The family then opened Hanamaru Zakka, which sells health, beauty and home goods, and Hanamaru Sake, which sells alcohol, in April 2023. All three stores are in the same building on Jericho Turnpike in Syosset.

When the grocery store first opened, 70% of the customers were Asian immigrants, said Wang, a native of Japan who now lives in Great Neck. Now, half the store's customers are Long Island natives of various ethnicities, he said.

He attributes the shift to Japanese culture gaining more exposure through the popularity of animé, more international travel and the growing popularity of some Japanese products, such as yogurt-based drinks, among young consumers.

"The younger generation of people love the Japanese culture. Somehow, they want to try" the store, Wang said.

Younger U.S. consumers are less likely to buy international food and ingredients from traditional grocery stores than older shoppers, retail experts said.

Among millennials, 48% say they purchase international food and ingredients from mass merchandisers, compared with 31% of baby boomers, according to Mintel Group Ltd., a London-based market research firm. Also, 15% of millennials say they purchase international food and ingredients from gourmet markets, compared with 7% of baby boomers.

Nayeli Serrano, 19, stopped in Jericho to visit an H Mart for the first time on Monday, as she was on her way home to Hempstead after classes at SUNY Old Westbury.

"I was here to just explore. I like to try Asian foods ... The hot foods look delicious," she said in the parking lot of the 60,000-square-foot H Mart, which is part of the largest Asian grocery chain in America.

Kennesaw, Georgia, resident Tamika Flaverney, a chef who uses the professional moniker Tamika Natasha, arrived on Long Island last week to visit her mother in Uniondale for a few days. Flaverney was in the H Mart on Monday buying food for a practice-run of an Asian-inspired meal she will make for a client in Atlanta later this month.

Shopping for fresh snow peas, dumpling wrappers, mushrooms, seafood and other items, Flaverney said she often shopped at Asian and Indian grocery stores for the ingredients used in her dishes because of the freshness and authenticity of their products.

"The premise of my food comes from my travel. I travel a lot, so I spend a lot of time outside of the country," said Flaverney, 40, who recently returned from Thailand and Korea. "I actually come in and I recreate things [for my clients] with my spin on it, with maybe a fusion spin on it."

"You definitely can’t find Thai basil at a regular grocery store," said Flaverney, who planned to make pad krapow, a Thai stir-fry dish, with the herb.

Although ethnic products account for a small share of total grocery sales — 6.87% of the 253.7 billion items sold at various types of grocery stores nationwide over the 12-month period that ended in August — sales of foods from some cultures are seeing significant growth, according to data from NielsenIQ, a Chicago-based market research firm.

Among the ethnic foods with the highest volume sales nationwide, the number of Asian products sold at various types of grocery stores increased 3.6% to 2.9 billion items annually between August 2021 and August 2024, while the number of items categorized as Hispanic, meaning they are from or inspired by countries whose primary language is Spanish, increased 9.9% to 531.8 million, according to NielsenIQ.

During the same period, Latino foods, which are defined as being from or inspired by countries in Latin America, remain among the top sellers, but the number of items sold in that category declined 6.5% to 2.4 billion, NielsenIQ reported.

'A fight for survival'

The traditional supermarket business is stagnant because discount formats, including supercenters, such as Walmart; limited-assortment stores, such as Aldi and Lidl; and dollar stores are taking a larger share of the grocery market due to their lower prices, Hauptman said.

As competition in the grocery industry grows tighter, mainstream supermarkets, especially large chains, are trying to take advantage of the growing opportunities to draw in ethnic consumers.

Last year 64% of various types of grocery stores used ethnic foods and multicultural assortments as a way to differentiate themselves from competitors, up from 56% in 2021, according to reports from the Food Marketing Institute, a grocery trade group in Arlington, Virginia, that based its analysis on surveys of U.S. and Canadian food retailers and wholesalers.

"Chains like ShopRite and King Kullen are offering expanded ethnic variety in their grocery aisles but also in meat, produce and prepared foods. At a Whole Foods hot bar, you have expansive Indian and Asian dishes. These retailers even have private-label ... offerings that include ethnic products like naan, tamales and Korean BBQ sauces," Madenberg said.

David Mandell owns seven grocery stores, including a Locust Valley Market and three Holiday Farms supermarkets on Long Island, while his other three stores are in Queens.

The foods his stores carry vary by neighborhood and what those communities want to see on shelves, he said. For example, his Key Food Supermarket on Hillside Avenue in Queens carries more products that would appeal to the Latin American, West Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations, he said.

That’s nothing new, he said. Neither is grocers’ battle to stay relevant.

"We are in a fight for survival to stay in business, always have been," Mandell said. "Marketing to our diverse neighborhoods has always been something we try to do. We experiment a lot. If it works, we stick with it."

His stores "tried and failed to carry a large selection of Asian foods," but hiring Korean store and produce managers who were more familiar with the community’s shopping preferences helped, he said.

Stew Leonard's, a grocer with eight supermarkets, including two on Long Island, added ethnic foods to its hot food bars and gourmet cases about 20 years ago, said Meghan Bell, spokeswoman for the Norwalk, Connecticut-based retailer.

"But, in recent years, we’ve seen a sales increase on our hot bars with dishes like jerk chicken, jerk shrimp, pernil, and rice and beans. The interest in these dishes not only reflects the community shopping at each specific location, but also reflects our chefs and our team members who are cooking in the kitchen," said Bell, who added ethnic food now accounts for about one-third of the 20,000 pounds of food the grocer sells weekly at its hot food bars. 

After Stew Leonard's expanded its ethnic produce selection over the last year, adding items such as mamey sapote, a fruit popular in Latin America, and freshly squeezed sugar cane juice, ethnic items now account for 5% of sales in the produce department, up from 2% in 2019, she said.

Stop & Shop, which has the largest grocery market share on Long Island, where it has 50 supermarkets, has been expanding its ethnic selection for the past four years in all departments at its nearly 400 stores, said Deane Sullivan, merchandising manager of Multicultural and Local for the Quincy, Massachusetts-based retailer.

"As our communities’ change, so must our stores, and we are committed to reviewing each individual store to better understand which communities have changed within the shopping area, and how we adjust assortment accordingly," said Sullivan, who declined to provide sales data but said "we have seen substantial growth in the sales of our multicultural offerings" over the last four years. 

While mainstream grocers are expanding their ethnic offerings, the countries of origin of these products make a difference in how well they are received by consumers, Hauptman said.

"It’s just not enough to have a Hispanic product section. But people from all different countries are looking for ... specific products that came from their home countries, or from the home countries of their parents or grandparents," he said.

Different from mainstream

Nigeria native Amina Iduma worked in grocery wholesaling for about five years before she opened Lami African Market, which sells mostly West African groceries.

She imports products through cargo freight air transport and grains and flowers by ship, which sets the store apart from mainstream stores that might sell African products, she said.

"My store differentiates from mainstream grocery stores because 85% of my items are West African products," said Iduma, a West Hempstead resident.

She picked the 2,800-square-foot space in Lynbrook for her store because it is centrally located on the Island and there is not much competition in the area, she said.

The store has performed better than Iduma expected, she said.

"I’ve met so many people here, so many great Africans here in Long Island. There are more than I thought living around here in Malverne and Lynbrook. ... I’m just excited to be here and see how far this store grows," said Iduma, whose store carries items such as pounded yam; custard powder; peppered meat; iru, which are fermented locust beans used to season West African food; ogi, a cereal made from fermented corn, and chin chin, a Nigerian fried, sweet snack made from flour.

Like mainstream supermarkets, ethnic grocers face their own set of challenges.

Ethnic stores tend to be small family-owned businesses that face more difficulties securing financing to expand, make store improvements or invest in technology upgrades, Madenberg said.

Taking risks

Another factor fueling the growth of ethnic grocery stores is the fact that immigrants are more likely to be business owners than people born in the United States, said David Dyssegaard Kallick, director of the Immigration Research Initiative, a nonprofit in Manhattan.

Per capita, immigrants are about 80% more likely to start a business than U.S.-born citizens, according to a 2022 study co-authored by an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This is particularly true for "main street" business owners, such as those who operate restaurants, clothing stores, coffee shops and grocery stores, Kallick said.

Facing employment challenges, such as discrimination when applying for jobs, language barriers and difficulties in transferring professional certifications from their home countries to the United States, many immigrants are willing to take on the risk of entrepreneurship to earn a living, he said.

"So, people, they know in their home country that there’s a different kind of food or a different way of organizing a coffee shop that for some reason just doesn’t exist here. And, so, they bring new ideas, or transfer ideas, and also sometimes serve a community of other immigrants," he said.

The nation’s foreign-born population grew to a record high of 46.1 million in 2022 and accounted for 13.8% of the total population of 333.3 million, according to a July report from the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Most immigrants, 77%, are in the United States legally, according to Pew.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.