Hungry For a Grocery, Neighbors Hope Korean-Themed H Mart Can Win Hearts and Stomachs
By: Andrea Powell
Tags: Retail, Culture, San Francisco, Asian American, Grocery Shopping

Residents in San Francisco’s far southwest corner have been without easy access to a grocery store since 2013, a problem serious enough that the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development made a point of recruiting retailers to an overlooked sliver of the city known as the Merced Extension Triangle.

Finally, one is coming. Korean specialty chain H Mart, based in New Jersey, will open its store by the end of November, if all goes as planned.

H Mart’s arrival is worth watching for many reasons, and not just for the grocery-starved residents nearby. “Right now, we’re underserved,” says Marc Christensen, vice president of the Merced Extension Triangle Neighborhood Association.

For all of its wealth and tech-savvy, San Francisco still has pockets without access to fresh, affordable groceries. But the last time OEWD brought a retailer to a neighborhood that lacked food access, things didn’t go as planned.

The previous market in the spot where H Mart is moving didn’t provide customers what they wanted, and it eventually shut down.

San Francisco is struggling right now with the difficulties of brick-and-mortar retail, and the grocery business is facing more competition from online delivery services. (One study suggests 49 percent of Americans shop for food online.) But not everyone wants, or can afford to, shop for food that way.

Given all that, can an old-school, brick-and-mortar, big-footprint market succeed in this hidden pocket of San Francisco?

‘Like an island’

The Merced Extension Triangle — not quite Oceanview, and south of Merced Heights — sits to the east of Lake Merced and the elite San Francisco Golf Club, bordered by freeways on two sides and the busy, four-lane Alemany Boulevard on a third. According to Woody LaBounty, San Francisco historian and founder of the Western Neighborhoods Project, the triangle was one of the last parts of the city to be developed. The neighborhood is anchored in the center by the OceanView Village shopping center, home to a Chase Bank, 24 Hour Fitness, Extreme Pizza, and a few other small retailers. On top of the plaza sit 370 apartment units that were built in 2002. But the area “is like an island,” says LaBounty. “Unless you stumbled on it because you were lost, you wouldn’t know it was there.”

Highway 1 (aka Junipero Serra Blvd.) to the west, Highway 280 to the south.

Adding to the plaza’s obscurity, its largest storefront has been empty for six years. Today the only sign of life left inside the empty 42,000 square-foot space is a large banner hanging above an empty refrigerator case advertising “Cold Beer,” proudly encouraging shoppers to embrace the Year of the Snake. That was in 2013.

Waiting for H Mart. (Photo by the author)

Recent history has not been kind to the space. From 2002 to 2006, it was an Albertson’s, until it fell victim to a wave of Northern California closures across the chain. The site then reopened as Oceanview Supermarket in 2007 and became a popular destination for foodies, thanks to its in-store hot pot restaurant. But residents say the supermarket struggled to maintain inventory, didn’t carry products customers wanted, and occasionally lacked English-speaking staff. After years of complaints and a costly safety violation, Oceanview closed in 2013, and shoppers were left trekking to the Trader Joe’s in Stonestown or the Pacific Supermarket further down Alemany.

H Mart is short for ‘Han Ah Reum,’ or ‘One Arm Full of Groceries.’

The robust neighborhood association, METNA, began lobbying for a new grocery store right away. “They were saying, ‘Please help us any way you can,’” says District 7 Supervisor Norman Yee. The group also pled its case to OEWD, which is in charge of attracting businesses to the city.

That department reached out to several national chains to drum up interest. According to OEWD director Joaquín Torres, his office first had a meeting with H Mart in 2015, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere. “We thought that lead might have expired,” says Torres. “But they decided to come back to us, somewhat out of the blue.”

When asked why it took three years to come to a deal, an H Mart spokesperson said via email that the company was reviewing business plans and working out the lease. “The city and county of San Francisco is the ‘compassionate’ and ‘golden’ city, where advanced and diversified lifestyle lives in,” the spokesperson wrote, regarding the company’s decision to pursue the site.

With the tagline “A Korean Tradition Made in America,” the first H Mart opened in Queens, New York, in 1982, and now has 66 stores in 12 states. According to its website, H Mart is short for “Han Ah Reum,” or “One Arm Full of Groceries.”