Andre and Angeline Dumas pushed a small metal carriage past the voluminous seafood displays at Good Fortune Supermarket recently. Twice a month, the couple drives from Woonsocket to Providence to stock up on fresh fish, shellfish and imported Asian vegetables that they can find in one stop.
Angeline Dumas, originally from the Philippines, is the family chef. She switched from a smaller, Vietnamese market to Good Fortune when it opened in 2018 on the site of a former car dealership.
“It’s bigger. I can buy anything I want,” she said. “Everything is here.”
Inside the 43,000-square-foot market, shoppers find meticulously organized, well-lighted aisles that are stocked with kitchen goods and packaged foods from Korea, China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and other countries.
The experience is unlike a traditional supermarket, and for patrons that’s the point. The diverse Greater Providence area has started to attract many large, ethnic food stores. Each is aimed at a slightly different population.
This summer, Vicente’s Supermarket will open a 15,000-square-foot store in the Woodlawn section of Pawtucket, focusing on foods traditional to African, Latin American, Portuguese and Caribbean diets. The owner of the grocery store, Vicente’s Pawtucket Inc., is a subsidiary of a company that operates a larger store in Brockton, Mass.
Urban Greens Food Co-op Corp., a 2-year-old grocery cooperative in Providence’s West End, has increasingly altered its balance of packaged foods, fruits, vegetables and meats to reflect the diversity of its customers.
‘I can buy anything I want. Everything is here.’
ANGELINE DUMAS, Good Fortune Supermarket customer
When the the co-op, constructed on the site of the old Louttit Laundry building on Cranston Street, opened in 2019, most of the customers were white residents, according to store manager John Santos. Since the pandemic started in March 2020, when the store increased its outreach into surrounding neighborhoods in the West End, Elmwood and South Providence, more people from other ethnicities and races were introduced to the store and have started coming in.
Santos, who used to work for Tropical Foods, a large Latin American and Caribbean food store in Roxbury, Mass., has changed the mix to suit people’s tastes. His stock now includes fufu, a doughy staple food popular in West Africa. Vegetables include yuca and when in season, garden eggs, a small, teardrop-shaped eggplant used in Caribbean and African foods.
“Rhode Island has an expanding African population,” Santos said.
Supermarket industry research indicates these niche markets are being driven by increased spending money on groceries, which accelerated through the pandemic, and the evolving diversity of the state’s population.
Nationally, the number of ethnic supermarkets is expanding, and their revenue has grown by about 3% annually since 2015, according to a report published last year by the research firm IBISWorld.
Growing Asian and Latino populations, in particular, are expected to fuel growing demand for cultural foods.
To compete, traditional supermarkets also are increasing their ethnic food offerings. Sales of specialty foods, which includes ethnic specialties and those related to cooking, shot up 19% nationally in 2020, according to the Specialty Foods Association.
The city of Pawtucket is benefiting from the arrival of Vicente’s. The market is set to open in a former Ocean State Job Lot store at 470 Pawtucket Ave., a building that had been mostly empty for several years. Vicente’s, which was founded in 1994 by a Cape Verdean immigrant, held a job fair in June to fill about 60 jobs.
A similar beneficial reuse of vacant commercial property has been seen in Providence. Good Fortune Supermarket occupies a building along Interstate 95 that once housed the sales and service departments of Herb Chambers Cadillac Inc. on Cadillac Boulevard in the Elmwood section of Providence. The dealership relocated to Warwick in 2009, leaving the building and 2.8-acre lot empty until Good Fortune opened in 2018.
The specialty market, which has a parent company based in New York City, carries a range of products that aren’t commonly found in suburban supermarkets, including pork heart, pancreas and liver. Many fish are sold unfilleted, and crabs, crawfish and eels are sold live from tanks.
Store manager Leo Lin said while the supermarket has attracted many Asian Americans and immigrants living in the area, it’s also drawing people from other races and ethnicities who are looking for unusual vegetables or the fresh seafood.
“It’s getting more people,” he said. “Before, it was mostly Asians. Now, it’s more [Spanish-speaking], white, Black [customers].”
People who like to cook make a stop here, as do students attending the local universities, he said. And because it is in a predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhood of Providence, Lin said he has included many South American and Latin American favorites in the aisles, such as Goya dried and canned beans, soups and spices.
Although the aisles have signs with descriptions in English, sometimes the packaging carries only the original language of the product.
Lin smiled when asked if he fields a lot of questions from customers about products.
“Yes, ‘What is this?’ ” he said.
Mary MacDonald is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Macdonald@PBN.com.
