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A gigantic oriental grocery store is opening in Mesa near the Mekong Market.
This store is in the old K-Mart store which was just east of Dobson on Broadway in Mesa. It's a half mile south of the Mekong Market.
Sneak peek: Check out Mesa's new, gigantic international marketplace Dominic Armato, The Republic | azcentral.com 12:34 p.m. MST April 19, 2016 AZ International Marketplace, from the owners of Mekong Plaza, opens at 9 a.m. April 20It’s like walking into a big-box store, a Walmart or Target. If either carried durian chips, rocoto chile paste and dried mackerel, that is. AZ International Marketplace, opening on Wednesday, April 20, is a gargantuan new mega store from the owners of Mekong Plaza that's designed to make an oversize impact, both commercial and cultural, on the southeast Valley. A few days before the grand opening, I spent more than two hours exploring this ambitious new venture, and STILL didn't have enough time to see it all. It’s a store for which “big” is a wholly inadequate term. Maria Hamim, who handles public relations for the project, puts it into words while I stand in the entrance gaping. “It truly is like an international market and a Walmart had a baby,” she says. Now, on the eve of its birth, this baby is a doozy of a bundle. Owners Peter Quach, Jimmy Lai and a team of investors hope to duplicate Mekong Plaza’s success, this time with a much bigger and broader scope. Located just half a mile south of Mekong Plaza, on the northeast corner of Dobson and Broadway roads, AZ International Marketplace takes over a cavernous space previously occupied by Kmart. Quach and Lai have purchased the entire plaza, along with the parking lot and neighboring retail buildings, which they are converting into a cultural and commercial center they envision as a touchstone for a more diverse customer base. They plan to host events and festivals and establish the plaza as a community hub rather than merely a place to shop. It’s a lofty goal, but this is a team that’s done it before. A family business success story Quach opened his first supermarket, Manila Oriental Market, in Daly City, Calif., in 1991. A Vietnamese immigrant of Chinese descent, Quach and his family made a success of the business, later partnering with Lai to help build an international supermarket chain with six California locations. When they decided to expand beyond the Golden State, the pair felt that a growing and underserved Asian population in the East Valley provided the best opportunity, and they started planning the property that would become Mekong Plaza. It turned out to be a good bet. Since opening in 2008, Mekong Plaza has developed into an important cultural and culinary hub for the Phoenix area, which lacks the type of dense, commercial Asian neighborhoods found in many other major cities. But as crowds filling the Asian-focused Mekong Plaza have grown, Quach and Lai have found it increasingly difficult to meet the needs of the larger community. In particular, Mekong Supermarket — the anchor store at Mekong Plaza — has become unmanageably crowded, lacking the space to properly serve customers who come seeking foods from an array of countries. AZ International Marketplace and the surrounding plaza, which is yet to be named, are intended to serve that broader community, supplementing rather than supplanting Mekong Plaza, which will remain unchanged. A collection of new restaurants — including Korean, pho, Los Angeles-style crawfish and Chinese hot pot — will fill many of the new plaza’s storefronts, but like Mekong, its linchpin is AZ International Marketplace. The store is roughly the size of two football fields, with a gargantuan floor that could house the entire Mekong Plaza building. Split between food products and general merchandise, its long rows of tall shelves surround produce, meat and seafood sections, which are centrally situated. Nearly a dozen small retail spaces flank the entrance, and the marketplace also includes a hardware and garden center. There’s a lot to get ready. And with the grand opening imminent, it’s all hands on deck. Quach and Lai project that AZ International Marketplace will employ 80 to 100 people when fully operational, and in the run-up to launch, a quick head count suggests nearly half that number are quickly working to prepare the $10 million store. Perishables will be loaded at the last minute, and though most of the shelves and freezers have been filled, many items still have to be priced. Stockers roam the aisles, navigating a maze of shipping pallets stacked with cartons, adding more and more products while scanning them to build a massive database that will catalog more than 50,000 items. At the line of registers up front, a small army of checkers sorts through piles of vegetables in cellophane bags, scanning them into the database and familiarizing themselves with the product codes. One of the checkers, who has worked at Mekong Supermarket, goes wide-eyed when asked how the stock at AZ International compares. “It’s a lot harder to remember. There’s way more stuff,” she says, gesturing toward endless rows of shelves. The store looks mostly prepared to welcome customers, but the southeast corner of the building — home to a small food court — is still a construction zone. Though they won’t be ready for the grand opening, a Mexican restaurant, Chinese restaurant and boba tea cafe eventually will fill the space. Similarly, half a dozen small shops that line the south wall of the building — including a gift shop, hair salon and insurance agent — look like they’ll need a little more time to get up and running, but the spaces are fully leased and there is already a waiting list. The marketplace’s main floor, on the other hand, looks like it’s just a few all-night shifts away from being ready for prime time. Countless nations, countless ingredients Despite spending two hours meandering the aisles, I only get a good look at perhaps a third of what’s available. The general merchandise leans most heavily on kitchen goods, but it includes sections for things like hardware, personal care, and even an entire aisle devoted to joss paper — fake currency, gold, clothing and personal items that are burned during traditional Chinese funerals and other ceremonies honoring the dead. The grocery portion of the store covers a stunning cultural range. Though some regions of the world are better represented than others, it’s difficult to find a cuisine, from Peruvian to Portuguese to Pakistani, that doesn’t have some kind of a presence. In addition to expanding the selection of Asian ingredients found at Mekong, Quach and Lai especially hope to attract customers seeking Mexican foods, devoting a large portion of the market’s space to a carniceria, multiple aisles of Latin grocery items and lines of huge bulk bins filled with ingredients like dried chiles, corn and piloncillo. South Asian foods, which felt shoehorned into Mekong, now fill both sides of an entire aisle and multiple freezer cases. Caribbean and African cuisines may not be the focus, but they certainly have a presence, sharing one end of the floor with Korean, Indonesian and more. An aquarium’s worth of dried seafood lines one refrigerator case, while Vietnamese sausages and pates fill another. I find pickled galangal, plantain fufu flour and Hawaiian barbecue sauce. In one freezer, hot dogs sit next to Filipino marinated pork skewers. There’s even a 24-foot-long section dedicated to vegan and vegetarian versions of Asian ingredients and sauces. Even if I weren’t obsessed with international cuisines, just having the opportunity to look at packaging design and unfamiliar products from around the world makes a spectacle of wandering the aisles. But I’m pretty sure I could fill a cart three times over with ingredients I can’t wait to get back to my kitchen. The wait won’t be long. Interested in going? Click here for AZ International Market's grand opening Facebook event Reach Armato at dominic.armato@arizonarepublic.com; call at 602-444-8533 or interact with him on Facebook,
Plaza tenants
AZ International Marketplace Where: 1920 W. Broadway Road, Mesa. Grand opening: Wednesday, April 20. A ribbon-cutting ceremony at 9 a.m. kicks off the festivities, which includes giveaways, prize drawings and dragon dancers through the weekend. Hours: 9 a.m.-9 p.m. daily. Details: 602-633-6296, azinternationalmarketplace.com.
AZ International Marketplace Where: 1920 W. Broadway Road, Mesa. Grand opening: Wednesday, April 20. Festivities include giveaways, prize drawings and dragon dancers through the weekend. Hours: 9 a.m.-9 p.m. daily. Details: azinternationalmarketplace.com, 602-633-6296.
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