Photos: H Mart opens its largest California grocery store in Westminster

A line of eager shoppers wrapped around the building Thursday morning at the Pavilions Place shopping center in Westminster as H Mart opened its largest grocery store in California.

Dancing dragons celebrated the store’s debut, the 85th for the New Jersey-based chain that specializes in Korean and Asian goods.

The 72,916 square-foot Westminster store — redeveloped from a shuttered Vons Pavilions on Beach Boulevard — comes with an 11-restaurant food court adjacent to the supermarket.

Brian Kwon, president of the privately-owned H Mart, said the building was a “rare opportunity” to create a sprawling grocery store experience for residents of the city and Orange County. Notably, the shopping center is surrounded on three sides by Huntington Beach, with the Bella Terra shopping center just a half-mile to the north.

The store packs in a lot of products, from aisles of housewares and wellness items to myriad pantry goods (sauces, noodles, snacks and dozens of brands of rice) to bountiful fish (some live), meat, dairy and produce.

As the doors opened Thursday morning, shoppers flooded inside, grabbing opening day deals on hotpots, boxes of cooked rice, prickly durian, enormous jackfruit, freshly made kimchi and packaged treats.

Customers stopped to take selfies with a giant tuna sitting on a table in the seafood department as H Mart employees plucked live lobsters and king crabs from tanks teeming with crustaceans. They browsed refrigerated cases stacked with kimchi, a spicy pickled condiment often made with cabbage or cucumbers, and sampled noodles, desserts and dumplings.

Kwon said H Mart, which has locations in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom, is negotiating daily with suppliers in Asia to keep prices reasonable as new tariffs kick in from the Trump administration.

Also see: Here’s what the new tariffs could cost each US household

“Because everyone knows what’s happening … and it’s difficult to just pass that on to the consumer,” Kwon said. “So we’re negotiating as fast as we can with our suppliers.”

The new store comes as several Asian supermarket chains expand in Orange County and the region. Gardena-based Tokyo Market recently opened a store on Culver Drive in Irvine. 99 Ranch Market, based in Buena Park, opened one of its newest stores in April in Aliso Viejo. Next year, Canada’s largest Asian grocery store chain, T&T Supermarket, will open two mega-stores in Southern California, one in Irvine and the other in Chino Hills.

Kwon said H Mart takes its competitors seriously while focusing on “quality, the variety, and the price.”

 “So as long as we’re focused on those three things, I think we’ll always be competitive.”

The 11-restaurant food hall attached to H Mart features an array of Asian cuisine, from Japanese katsu (fried chicken or pork cutlets) to Korean dumplings, chicken, hot dogs and specialty egg toast, plus boba tea and the bakery Tous Les Jours.

Retail analyst Craig Rosenblum said grocery store operators are leaning into experiences to make their stores unique in a sea of supermarkets.

“(They) have to focus on the one or two things that can be unique, and value/price is a tough place to play, so many have to opt for experience,” he said. “On average, today’s shoppers are going to six to seven different stores to satisfy their needs.”

In case you wondered about the name, H Mart is a shortened version of the Korean phrase “han ah reum,” which means “one armful of groceries.”

Address: 16450 Beach Blvd., Westminster