Meng Truong and his wife, Mey, who have lived in the Grand Valley for 13 years, recently opened the GJ Mart, full of Asian goods, at the intersection of North 24th Street and Belford Avenue. “This is our first time in the grocery business,” Meng said.
GJ Mart receives its litany of Asian products from a distributor in California. The store’s shelves are packed with items from across Asia, including Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean and Filipino snacks and delicacies.
Meng Truong and his wife, Mey, have lived in the Grand Valley for 13 years, but they’ve recently taken on a brand-new experience: owning and operating a market.
One day, Meng and Mey noticed that Teller Arms Liquor had moved out of the building at the intersection of North 24th Street and Belford Avenue. The Vietnamese-Cambodian couple immediately had interest in the space but weren’t sure how to utilize it. They considered opening a convenience store before they decided they could stand out more by turning the building into an Asian market.
Meng Truong and his wife, Mey, who have lived in the Grand Valley for 13 years, recently opened the GJ Mart, full of Asian goods, at the intersection of North 24th Street and Belford Avenue. “This is our first time in the grocery business,” Meng said.
Scott Crabtree
At the start of February, the two reopened the building as GJ Mart.
“This is our first time in the grocery business,” Meng said. “Running a grocery store is a little bit tough. You have to keep looking at the dates (on the products) and try to see what sells and doesn’t sell. You have to bring in things that sell and bring in things that people request.
“Some Filipino people asked for some Filipino snacks and noodles, some people ask for Korean noodles; whatever the customer asks for, we try to bring it in if possible.”
GJ Mart receives its litany of Asian products from a distributor in California. The store’s shelves are packed with items from across Asia, including Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean and Filipino snacks and delicacies.
GJ Mart receives its litany of Asian products from a distributor in California. The store’s shelves are packed with items from across Asia, including Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean and Filipino snacks and delicacies.
Scott Crabtree
From Pho to traditional Chinese herbal tea to tempura seaweed chips to Taiwanese noodles to cha giò spring rolls, Meng and Mey — also the store’s only two employees — have already made variety a priority.
“We feel like it’s kind of tough because deciding what to bring in and what not to bring in, we have to be careful,” Meng said. “We’re not sure how the business would go at first. Probably not too many people know how to cook some Asian food. At Walmart, they sell certain Asian products that are popular — City Market, too — but, of course, they don’t have the whole selection. We try to bring the whole selection for everybody; a rainbow of different flavors.”
The first month of business didn’t feature much advertising and, as a result of that and the store’s location off of North Avenue, GJ Mart hasn’t attracted much of a crowd so far. The opening month was still festive for Meng and Mey, however, because of the thrill of opening a business as well as bringing in Lucky Thai Food Truck to serve patrons in the parking lot.
Meng did note that, because of the store’s proximity to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, GJ Mart has started to establish a clientele of military veterans. Meng said that, for local veterans of wars in Vietnam and Korea, the store provides a plethora of dishes that they came to love during their deployments, so for some of them, it’s convenient to leave the VA Hospital and stop by GJ Mart on their way out.
“Of course you have to keep more product to attract more people,” Meng said. “If you don’t have enough product, it’s hard to attract people to come in. If you attract people to come in, they can see a bit more variety in product.”
