| Welcome to Bw Reads, our weekend newsletter featuring one great magazine story from Bloomberg Businessweek. A Korean specialty market that opened four decades ago in the Woodside neighborhood of Queens, New York, is now a billion-dollar empire with a cult following of foodies. Adam Chandler wrote this feature about the H Mart phenomenon. You can find the whole story online here. You can also listen to it here. If you like what you see, tell your friends! Sign up here. The Friday before Labor Day isn’t thought of as a blockbuster day for in-person retail; in truth, it’s mostly thought of as a day to escape the trappings of life. But it’s 11 a.m. off Exit 16 of the New Jersey Turnpike, and hundreds of people have eschewed the beaches of the Jersey Shore or the Hamptons to gather at the American Dream mall. They’ve said no to the saltwater taffy and sunscreen and yes to zealous shoppers and underparented kids, all to stand in clumps. There’s a clump in line for pearl milk tea and a clump around a pastry case full of guava Danish and taro cream bread. A passing mall walker in a visor inserts herself into a clump near a face-painting station to find out what all the fuss is about. Everyone has gathered, she learns, to celebrate the opening of a food court. This food court is no Sbarro or Mrs. Fields affair. Rather, it’s designed by H Mart Inc., the Korean American grocery chain whose stores have become a culinary and cultural obsession over the past decade. The hard-to-find glories on offer in its aisles can take the form of gochugaru and jackfruit or Shin Ramyun instant noodles and Dalgona coffee—all of which have become fixtures among legacy recipe developers and TikTok creators alike. Today casual references to H Mart can be found in the precious recipe headnotes of Bon Appétit dinners as well as the workaday shopping lists on the Food Network’s site. When Michelle Zauner, lead singer of the indie pop band Japanese Breakfast, wanted to title her 2021 memoir about grief and belonging Crying in H Mart, the marketing team at Knopf publishing house didn’t flinch. (The bestselling book is now being adapted into a movie.) While plenty of privately held, family-run grocery chains such as Wegmans and H-E-B have cultivated fandoms for their private-label lines or specialty sandwiches, H Mart’s ascent reflects more than just a better or more affordable version of what most Americans already shop for. The company’s expansion across the US has coincided with decades of demographic shifts in which Asian Americans have become the fastest-growing group, and South Korean culture in particular has given rise to juggernauts in pop music and beauty. That American infatuation with all things Korean helps explains why, as H Mart told the New York Times last summer, roughly 30% of the specialty grocer’s shoppers are now non-Asian.  Fans inside the new H Mart Food Hall at the American Dream mall in February. Photographer: Janice Chung for Bloomberg Businessweek “We’ve been anticipating this opening for months,” says Brian Cadag, a twentysomething who, along with his brother, Marc, had been waiting for the date to be unveiled. “We saw the post on Instagram two or three days ago, and I was like, ‘We’re going!’” adds Marc, a green-and-gold dragon mask painted on his face. Their plan, they explain, is to try something from each of the 11 food court stalls next to the mall’s H Mart grocery store, all chosen by a curator from H Mart corporate. There are bulgogi beef brisket heroes developed by a Michelin-winning chef to split, Korean hot dogs on a stick coated in Flamin’ Hot Cheetos batter to be inhaled and seafood noodles to be slurped. To kick things off, though, Brian swings by the food court’s sprawling bar for a pre-lunchtime Jet to Jeju, a cocktail named for the beloved South Korean island paradise. Although Marc has already forgotten exactly what he ordered—“a white peach and soju something”—they make it clear that this fraternal mission to suck the marrow out of H Mart’s every offering will become a ritual pilgrimage. “We’re going to take a lot of friends over here,” says Brian. While a massive food court located beneath a 16-story-tall indoor ski slope inside the nation’s second-largest mall might be the most Barnum-esque expression of the Korean chain, H Mart as a destination is hardly a new concept. Yet with so many American food habits driven by thrift, speed and convenience, H Mart stores are an aberration. They’re neither cheap nor particularly streamlined; there are no self-checkout lines or stacks of bulk items or overly fancy apps. The layouts and offerings can vary wildly from store to store. But with 100-plus outposts across the US, Canada and the UK; more than $1 billion in annual sales; the steady tailwinds of social media; and major grocers cribbing from its playbook, it’s worth asking: Will H Mart change how we shop? The answer, of course, is that it already has. Keep reading: How America Got Hooked on H Mart |
