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Viet-Wah Supermarket, one of Seattle's largest Asian supermarkets, will serve its last customers on Friday (September 30), closing permenantly at 7 p.m., according to KING 5.
The grocery store has been around for 41 years, serving the Little Saigon area of the Chinatown-International District. Leaders of the store said the last couple of years has been difficult.
"Our landlord sold the property and it's being redeveloped, so I believe groundbreaking is next year,” Leeching Tran, vice president of Viet-Wah Supermarket, told reporters. “So, we're on a bit of a timeline, but aside from that, the conditions in the neighborhood have been really terrible the last couple years; COVID hit, anti-Asian hate hit the neighborhood really hard."
Tran's father, a Vietnamese refugee who fled to the U.S. for a better future, started the business to feed the community in the 1980s.
"He was with, you know, all the other Vietnamese refugees who came here without much and without any roots in the U.S." the executive explains. "This store opened up when I was just two years old, so I grew up in this store, in this neighborhood. Yeah, it's like another home."
Tran's not the only one reeling from the news. Viet-Wah shoppers told reporters they're getting emotional over the longtime supermarket's closure.
“There’s a lot of food that you can only find here and not at Safeway or Walmart,” Da Nguyen said, per KOMO. “I’ve been going here for over 10 years in my life so it’s kind of a sad moment for me.”
"Everybody has been shopping, all my friends, family, cousins, step-relatives, they always shop here," Ninah Trong, a longtime customer, told KING 5.
Viet-Wah Supermarket has another location in Renton along Sunset Boulevard. It'll remain open.