Dai-Thanh owners find locations for 2 new stores

SAN JOSE >> The owners of the popular Dai Thanh Supermarket in downtown San Jose have bought sites for two new San Jose stores in an expansion that will keep the existing market open for at least two to three more years.

The site at 418 S. Second St., where Dai Thanh Supermarket now operates, has been bought for $17 million, and the Hua family that sold the choice site has purchased two other locations in San Jose where it will open new markets with the same name.

Thanh Hua, the patriarch of the Hua family, was a traveling salesman — driving from Seattle to Los Angeles and back up through the Bay Area — marketing grocery items. The job put him in a position to buy the supermarket that he eventually operated jointly with his wife and later their children.

“I got along with the previous owner and she admired my business skills,” Thanh said. “She offered the opportunity for us to take over her business because she didn’t want to run it anymore. We moved here in a U-Haul.”

With the proceeds from the sale of the current property on South Second Street, the Hua family bought two other San Jose sites, spending a total of $14.7 million.

All of the purchases were completed on July 19, Santa Clara County property records show:

• Two parcels at the current An-Jan Feed & Pet Supply with addresses of 1651 Monterey Road and 33 San

Jose Ave. were bought for $7.9 million, according to county documents.

• One parcel at the site of a closed Michaels arts and crafts store at 2040 Tully Road was bought for $6.8 million.

Both of these properties will become Dai-Thanh Supermarket stores.

“With this expansion of our business, we are hoping to reinvest in the San Jose community that we’ve grown with,” said Alanna Hua-Yamada, Thanh’s daughter. “We hope to carry on the legacy and the business that our mom and dad built.”

The two new stores will be ramped up in a fashion to enable a continuous operation and smooth transition for the Dai-Thanh Supermarket business on the day a few years from now when the South Second Street store halts operations downtown.

“As the community continues to grow and as the downtown develops, we wanted to be sure that we could continue to serve our customers,” Long Hua, Thanh’s son, said. “With all of the development going on, it became clear that we needed to evolve as the city evolves.”

At both of the new locations, the Hua family intends to utilize the existing structures rather than bulldoze the properties.

The family members anticipate that the Michaels site on Tully Road will be the first to open as a new Dai-Thanh store.

“It depends on what the city wants,” said David Hua, one of Thanh’s sons. “There will be some improvements” at the Michaels site.

The An-Jan property at Monterey Road and San

Jose Avenue is more likely to be opened around the time that the long-time downtown supermarket ends its operations. The family views the proposal for the An-Jan site as “very preliminary,” as Long put it.

“The Michaels site will be a more immediate manifestation of our wanting to be part of San Jose’s continued growth,” Long said.

Yet serving the customers is of more importance than the exterior and interior revamp of the two future Dai-Thanh sites.

“We want to do it right,” Long said. “In any scenario, there will be continuity and there will always be a place for our customers to go.”

Hua-Yamada recalled how her parents were always involved in keeping the shoppers satisfied.

“My mom and dad really cared about the customer’s experience, they were really hands-on,” she said. “They wanted to be sure that everything was the best quality and the best price. That’s why we have a lot of customers who have been with us for years.”

Over a 35-year period, the clientele has become very loyal, the elder Hua said.

“A lot of the customers are third-generation customers,” Thanh said.

The loyalty of the shoppers has even reached the point where the supermarket is something of a destination.

“We have customers who visit us from Sacramento, some from San Francisco,” Hua-Yamada said. “Even though our store has had improvements over the years, the essence is still the same. It’s to serve the customers.”