What You’ll Find At Charlotte’s Super G Mart

Jennie Nguyen and her husband moved to Charlotte from Charleston in 2021. The main reason: He landed a job here. A secondary reason: She was tired of Charleston, including its seafood-and-Southern-dominated food scene. Nguyen, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrant parents, had graduated from Winthrop University in Rock Hill four years before. She’d grown to like our bigger city just north of the state line. “It wasn’t too big, but it wasn’t too small,” she says. “I thought it was the perfect size for me.”

Once here, Nguyen noticed something unexpected. Hmm, there’s a Vietnamese place. There’s another. Hey, that’s an Indian restaurant. She was born in Honolulu but raised in Charleston, “and I really missed my mom’s cooking,” she says. “Charleston does not have a great Asian culinary identity. So when I moved to Charlotte, I saw the potential. … You know, growing up, my family were the only Asian people I saw. And here were other people who looked like me—and then I saw multiple Asian restaurants.”

Toward the end of that year, Nguyen founded a Facebook group, CLT Asian Eats, for her family and friends to exchange restaurant recommendations. As of mid-April, the group had 13,228 members and counting. Nguyen’s surprise has worn off. “There is huge demand here,” she says. “For example—Super G (Mart) opened Alley 51, which is an Asian-focused food court, and they’re always busy.”

Here’s what you see when you go there: It’s a maze of food booths with an industrial ceiling and multicolored sphere lamps strung throughout. Over here, near the dining tables and their brightly painted steel chairs: Great Wall Chinese Kitchen. In another corner, Manila Grill, with its menu of Filipino dishes; next to that, Quicitop, which serves roasted cold noodles and Chinese crepes called jian bing. Turn another corner for Rai Lay Thai Express and Mukja, a Korean booth. As of early this year, Alley 51—on Pineville-Matthews Road, aka N.C. Highway 51—had 14 vendors and plans for more.

Blue crabs found in Super G’s seafood market.

It opened in May 2024 as an addition and complement to Super G Mart. This location, in Pineville, is the third for the Han family, which opened the first of its international supermarkets in Greensboro in 2008 and the second on Independence Boulevard in Charlotte in 2010. The Pineville location is different, though, designed to reflect the Charlotte market’s surging interest in not just eating international meals but preparing them.

“During the pandemic, when restaurants shut down and groceries remained open as essential businesses, there was an increase of 20% in revenue for the grocery sector,” says Peter Han, Super G Mart’s vice president for business development. “But Super G Mart saw growth higher than that, between 25% and 30%. What that means is that when everybody had to learn how to cook at home for the first time instead of eating out, eventually they got tired of cooking the same things at home. And then, with modern technology and social media and a lot of the recipes at your fingertips, we saw a lot of first-time customers come to our Independence location.”

Peter is the younger son of South Korean immigrants who decided to open the Super G supermarkets as a family business; his mother, Irene, is the company president, and his older brother, Paul, is vice president of operations. Peter, 31, joined the business and moved from Greensboro to Charlotte in 2020 to establish the new Super G Mart in a former Super Kmart across from Carolina Place Mall.

It opened on Christmas Eve 2022, and it represents, in food and culture, expansion and connection: The aisles are wider than in its predecessors. The items in those aisles reflect not just a wide range of Asian cultures—Chinese, Laotian, Vietnamese, Indian, Middle Eastern, and more—but North and Latin American and European, too. On one aisle, you’ll encounter Cumhuriyet (“Republic”) brand sucuk, a fermented and cured Turkish beef sausage. On another, you can pick up a bottle of Pride of Pangasinan fish sauce from the Philippines. On a third, you’ll find cases of Budweiser.

And toward the front, next to the spot where Super G Mart connects to Alley 51, is another surprise, something you wouldn’t expect in a supermarket: an 800-square-foot community center called The Club. It can hold about 40 people, and Super G Mart uses it for free monthly language and cooking classes. The company partners with businesses and chefs, who pass on what they know to whoever’s willing to learn. Enjoy lo mein or spicy pad thai but don’t know how to make it? Learn here.

It’s the kind of cultural enrichment that works only in a place open to new possibilities, in food and other things. “The more we bridge that gap for first-time customers, the more they know what to buy,” Peter says. “So it’s not only good for business, it’s good for sharing culture and knowledge through food.”