SAN JOSE — Dai Thanh Supermarket, a popular Vietnamese grocery, has opened its second store in San Jose, marking an expansion that was part of a busy year that included the closing of its long-time downtown location.
The newest location for Dai Thanh Supermarket is 1641 North Capitol Avenue, a store that held a grand opening this week and catered to big crowds for its launch, according to Alanna Hua-Yamada, daughter of Thanh Hua, the patriarch of the family that operates the Dai Thanh grocery stores.
“We have really expanded,” said Hua-Yamada during an interview the day before the grand opening. “We are so fortunate with our new stores. We have really been blessed.”
After the grocery company sold its store in downtown San Jose’s SoFA district for $17 million, Dai Thanh turned around and bought an existing retail building on Tully Road for $6.8 million and an An-Jan Feed & Pet Supply at the corner of Monterey Road and San Jose Avenue for $7.9 million, purchase deals that occurred in July 2021.
At the time of those purchases, Dai Thanh intended to open a new store at each of the San Jose locations it had bought.
In June, Dai Thanh Supermarket opened a grocery location at 2040 Tully Road in San Jose. An in-person observation in early January of that site showed that the store was packed with customers and the nearby parking lot was crammed with vehicles.
However, the city’s approval process to allow a supermarket to emerge at the An-Jan Feed & Pet property has been sluggish, in Hua-Yamada’s view.
When the Monterey Road development proposal began to languish in the city’s approval process, the Hua family scouted for a fresh alternative to the An-Jan site.
An opportunity sprouted at the North Capitol location in a building that had been occupied by Lucky’s Supermarket until that store closed its doors in recent years. Dai Thanh Supermarket leased the empty store space.
In December, around Christmas, Dai Thanh Supermarket closed its long-time downtown San Jose store where it had operated for more than 35 years. The company scrambled to open the new North Capitol store.
The future of the An-Jan site on Monterey Road is unclear, due to the lagging pace of the city’s review.
While the transition was underway, Dai Thanh Supermarket kept all of the downtown San Jose employees on the payroll. The employees who were working at the Dai Thanh downtown grocery store all transferred to the North Capitol location, according to Hua-Yamada.
“We really wanted to get this new store open,” Hua-Yamada said.
On the day before the grand opening on North Capitol Avenue, dozens of employees — including several family members — bustled about as they prepared items, stocked shelves, pushed carts, prepped sections and checked supplies.
Thanh Hua, the family patriarch, kept taking on tasks, but as soon as family members spotted Hua sneaking in some work, they urged him to avoid over-exerting himself through activities such as lifting heavy items.
The two new stores are considerably larger than the original downtown San Jose supermarket, which totaled about 10,000 square feet.
The just-opened Dai Thanh grocery on North Capitol Avenue totals 33,000 square feet, Hua-Yamada said. The Tully Road supermarket that opened in June totals 16,000 square feet, she said.
Dai Thanh Supermarket now has about 50 people working at each of the two new stores, for a total of 100 combined at these locations.
“We do all we can to hire immigrants,” Hua-Yamada said. “That’s how we started. We want to give others the same opportunities we had.”
During an interview in 2021 with this news organization, the family members recounted how, at the time the family left its native Vietnam, friends and relatives predicted the Hua family would not find success in America.
When the parents and children arrived in San Jose in a U-Haul after a drive from Seattle, they lived in a Victorian house next door to the supermarket the parents had just bought. They were able to glance down at the supermarket from their room.
Hua-Yamada said her earliest memory of working at the long-time supermarket on South Second Street was when she was nine years old.
“I bagged groceries,” Hua-Yamada said. “Our parents said if we weren’t in school, we were working.”
She believes that opening the new stores at the new locations is a way to extend the family’s increasingly rich history in the supermarket business.
“It keeps my parents’ goals alive,” Hua-Yamada said. “It keeps their legacy alive.”
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