Prepared food still holds court in grocers
Asian supermarkets have long blurred lines between retail and eatery
It was odd to see so much food laid out in front of me at a time when most restaurants are scaling back menus and any food that comes out of a kitchen is already packaged to-go. Not to mention my local mall food court sits practically deserted with only one or two stalls remaining open.
At the food court inside Seafood City Supermarket, a large, California-based Filipino grocer that just opened a location in Scarborough (20 Lebovic Ave.) not too far from where I live, there were rows upon rows of food in hot trays filled with pork adobo and menudo, kare kare, stuffed eggplant, fried smelts, pancit and dozens of blackened whole squid, fish, pork belly and meat skewers coming off the grill in the adjacent glass-covered room.
There were also sounds I missed now that I rarely leave the house — the hiss of meat hitting a hot grill, the clanging of utensils against metal trays and the couple in front of me wondering out loud what to order.
With some menu suggestions from the employee managing the line, I ordered a whole grilled pompano with a side of rice and pork adobo with two skewers of barbecued chicken and pork. The fish was nicely charred and stuffed with marinated peppers while the adobo and skewers were tender and still hot when I got home.
It’s still nerve-racking leaving the house to get groceries (and on some weeks, a bit of a drag having exhausted my brain on what to cook), but I will always stop by a supermarket’s food court for takeout. For one thing, I get groceries and a weekly
takeout treat in one trip, but it’s also an easy “try before you buy” way to taste a new dish before I zip up and down the aisles to gather the ingredients on the next trip.
Before the pandemic, when dining-in and meeting up with others wasn’t a public-health concern, I’d meet up with friends at the supermarket food court for lunch and then browse the aisles for snacks. Even my partner, who loathed the shopping mall, would never turn down a date at the food court inside the Korean grocer near my house. The food was affordable and a step up from mall fast food.
In addition to Seafood City, Asian grocers in the GTA such as T&T, Galleria Supermarket, Nations and Field Fresh Supermarket are as well-known for
their food courts and in prepandemic times, a place to gather for a sit-down meal. In Thornhill, the lunch counter at grocer Khorak Supermarket was also where I tried many Persian stews and grilled dishes for the first time.
It was Galleria’s flagship location at York Mills and Don Mills where I first had Korean fried chicken years ago, which led me to the chili paste gochujang that is now one of my pantry staples. Its food court is still operating now, but at reduced capacity and with no dine-in, of course.
“It’s not a difficult thing to find a Korean food court in supermarkets in Korea. It’s a common thing throughout Asia. When people shopped for groceries and felt hungry, they can just go to the food court and fill their bellies,” said Jaewon Lee,
assistant marketing manager at the Galleria in Vaughan.
The idea of food courts in supermarkets came from Europe and Asia, said Sylvain Charlebois, a professor specializing in food distribution and the grocery industry at Dalhousie University.
“People wanted to gather and then do groceries, or shop for groceries and find a place to sit down and relax. You saw it in Europe and Asia because the apartments were small and people needed a gathering place. It wasn’t a thing in North America back then because we had the luxury of space,” he said.
The blurring of retail spaces and dining has been around for a while. After all, Ikea and Costco are as famous for wares as their respective meatballs and hot dogs (and people continue to be nostalgic for the diners inside the defunct Zellers department store), but it really became more common in North American supermarkets in the last decade, Charlebois said. It’s not uncommon to find a small seating area with a microwave to heat up prepared food at a supermarket pre-pandemic, he added.
Having a food court and upping the options for prepared food was a way for grocers to compete with restaurants as more people ate out in recent years, Charlebois said.
“This all wasn’t by accident, it was managing that blurring line between offering service and retail.”
He also said the food courts add another layer of appeal to customers during the pandemic, despite not being able to serve as gathering spaces.
“Now they’re trying to capture people with cooking fatigue, menu management fatigue and doing dishes fatigue,” he said. “If you’re lacking inspiration and want some ideas, save some time and get an affordable meal — it’s an option.”