Revenue on the rise for ethnic grocers

So-called ethnic markets - retailers who sell food and other items from other cultures - would seem to be a small, niche part of the giant retail industry.

But recent figures from IBISWorld, an international research company, puts current revenue for those businesses globally at $29 billion - much of that fueled by demand in the United States for such food items by the growth in Asian and Hispanic customers as well as by other shoppers seeking variety.

Annual growth from 2009 through 2014, IBISWorld found, was 1.8 percent.

And a recent report notes that the possibilities for ethnic food stores are only expected to get better over the next five years.

Saigon Market in downtown Cedar Rapids has been in operation locally since 1993, though not continuously. Current Owner Hung Pham has run the market for most of that time and said that doing business since 2001 has been considerably more feasible, thanks in large part to getting better access to products.

'For a long time I used to drive a big truck back and forth to Chicago to pick up what I needed for the store because we couldn't have items shipped to us here in Cedar Rapids,” he said.

While the products at Saigon Market are imported, today the small grocery store doesn't have to worry about handling the importing themselves.

'We buy everything from a distributor, who ships direct to our store,” he explained.

An electronic engineer by trade, Pham decided to go into the grocery business after being laid off years ago.

'I was really just looking for some work to do,” he recalled.

Hung noted that he does still visits Chicago on occasion to see what new products are available.

'We do try to bring in new products here at Saigon Market,” he said. 'If they work, we order more.”

In a survey conducted in 2014 by LoyaltyOne, a loyalty-marketing company that focuses on the grocery industry among other fields, research showed that nearly 9 out of 10 ethnic grocery shoppers believed that the selection of ethnic food and ingredients is an important feature in choosing where they shop.

In fact, some 63 percent of those shoppers said they weren't finding what they needed at their primary grocery store.

Hung knows this to be true locally.

'We usually have our regular customers that come here,” he said. 'They come in and they know what they are looking for.

'A lot of the products we have here you can't find at Hy-Vee,” Hung added, noting that they specialize in Asian, Middle Eastern and some African grocery items.

Take the durian, for example, a fruit that is considered a delicacy in some countries in Southeast Asia.

'It smells very bad. We sell it frozen,” he said. 'It's something you develop a taste for.”

'We do have some new customers that come in with a recipe they have printed off from the Internet and we show them what they need.”

Saigon Market does offer a wide variety of fresh produce, but Hung said a good number of its products are dry goods, such as noodles and rice, and a very large selection of spices.

'We have spices from many, many countries,” he said.

Running a small grocery store certainly has its operational challenges.

'I spend a lot of hours here,” Hung said. 'It can be hard to hire people (to work) part time when we really only need them two or three hours per day a few days a week. Our need for help all depends on when we have our merchandise coming in.”

Hung said that winter tends to be a busier season.

'As the weather gets warmer, it gets slower here,” he said. 'A lot of our customers are planting their own vegetables at home. They also tend to travel in the summer months and will pick up items they need when they are in bigger cities.”