Abroad, a taste of home

Small shops offer ethnic foods

Friday, Nov. 6, 2009

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by ERICA MITRANO Store Manager Jun Gopez bags groceries for regular customer Antonia Faraon at Masagana Market in Waldorf. The small grocery store caters to Filipino immigrants and offers a variety of ethnic foods and other services. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

A casual count finds six supermarkets in Waldorf alone. But even in such a competitive atmosphere, smaller players have managed to carve out a niche for themselves in the notoriously low-margin business of grocery sales and offer customers experiences they say cannot be had at chain stores.

In Waldorf, several ethnic grocery stores are tucked into strip malls or industrial parks, offering immigrants a taste of home while giving venturesome native-born Americans a chance to score bargains and stumble across new culinary experiences.

Masagana Market, whose name means "bountiful" in the owners' native Tagalog language, thrives by carrying products specifically requested by customers, according to store co-owner Bhok Banzuela. Tagalog is spoken in the Phillipines.

Food comprises most of the inventory but the small store also carries DVDs and clothing. Masagana also offers services useful to its customer base, including money wire transfers and a system for sending packages home, something used to send rice to relatives during a flood and regularly used to send everything from canned goods to old clothes during less dramatic times.

The store doesn't need to compete with supermarkets because it carries products its majority Filipino customer base can't find anywhere else. Banzuela was concerned about the recession but so far it hasn't impacted sales, he said.

Waldorf resident Antonia Faraon, a native of the Philippines, said she planned to remain a loyal customer "because I do not forget our food, more delicious than American food."

Banzuela estimates 90 percent of his customers are Filipino, but said the store attracts people from all backgrounds. He opened the business with his brother-in-law, James Escano, and has enjoyed the adventure so far.

"It's actually, it's very interesting. You learn a lot of things. I didn't know about this business. I just learned it from, if you do it every day," he said.

Things are not as easy for Benedict Ohanyerenwa, who runs the Abuja International Food Market nearby.

His store, which specializes in African and Caribbean food, boasts products definitely strange to American tastes, like barrels full of large dried fish and bags of green herbs with unfamiliar names. Signs in the windows boast that akara, souya and African snuff are available. But his products, like flour made from elubo, the African yam and a staple crop, are as common in his native Nigeria as macaroni and cheese is here and offer welcome familiarity to members of African-derived cultures.

Ohanyerenwa decided to open the store more than a year ago because "I thought that food was very vital to human existence" but finds himself struggling to attract customers. Business is "really bad," he said.

Mother Nature has compounded his misfortune. Last week he was cleaning up — and throwing away a pile of products — after ants attacked all varieties of flour, chewing little holes in the bags and spilling yellow flour all over the shelves. The infestation embarrassed him and he has resorted to storing starchy foods in plastic tubs, which is bad for visibility but he said he had no choice.

Ohanyerenwa's hope is to weather the downturn and build up the store enough to sell it.

"I plan to stay as long as I can afford to pay the bills. It's gotten tighter and rougher [with the recession]. I'm digging my hand in my savings," he said. "When you are outside the grass is always greener, but when you come in, there's so many things to do daily to keep things running."

Rehmat Ali of Pakistan was in the trade long before he started Shalimar Grocers three years ago, he said via a customer who translated his Urdu for a reporter.

Customer Sunny Malhotra, co-owner of two Indian restaurants including the new Curry Dreams in Waldorf, said stores like Shalimar inspire customer loyalty because they carry products the big players do not bother with.

"The stuff here will be fresh and coming in small quantities. It's a little home away from home," Malhotra said.

Perhaps the most established ethnic store in Waldorf is Mercadito Waldorf, opened by Guadalupe Quiros more than a decade ago to cater to Latino customers.

Quiros started the business "because my husband didn't want me to work for nobody else," she said. An added benefit was that it allowed her to care for her children — and now, her grandchildren — during the day. While she worked on a recent Monday she kept one eye on Tony, the 2-year-old son of her daughter, who was at work. Perhaps a budding entrepreneur himself, the boy ran around the store delightedly clutching handfuls of coins she'd given him to play with — occasionally he asked for more, but she told him he already had enough money.

The store functions as a kind of community center; customers can even get basic medical care there, as an Upper Marlboro clinic sends nurses one day a month to give free examinations.

"And they speak Spanish," Quiros said.

Being in business for herself "is OK. It keeps me busy," she said. She will stay in business "as long as I make money to pay the rent."

Not all specialty grocers cater to ethnic markets, however. Buehler's Marketplace in St. Leonard has been a fixture of the community for more than 60 years. Maria Buehler purchased the store four years ago from her father Pat, who is known as the "unofficial mayor" of the town.

Pat Buehler, in turn, inherited the business from his mother, Bertie Buehler, who opened the store in 1948.

Buehler's competes against supermarkets by offering a community atmosphere and good food, Buehler said.

"We're famous for our fried chicken. We have breakfast, lunch and dinner daily," she said. "We pretty much carry a full line of groceries and try to have a little bit of everything. And a lot of stuff we have is stuff you won't find in larger stores, like hand-dipped Hershey's ice cream — it's hard to find hand-dipped ice cream anywhere. [We also have] a 99-cent ice cream social on Thursday evenings. That's going really well."

At its core, her business model is based on personal connection, she said.

"I would say the biggest difference between a store like mine and larger grocery stores here is [that] I pretty much know all my customers by name. There's a lot more customer loyalty and appreciation …" she said.

emitrano@somdnews.com