Despite challenges, new corner stores keep coming to the Tenderloin

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Before the closure of the Fillmore District Safeway last month after 40 years in business, Elena would take the bus an hour and a half back and forth with her two daughters and buy as many groceries as they could carry back to their apartment in the Tenderloin. 

On a recent Wednesday, she stood inside Amigo’s Market at 500 Ellis St., her basket sparsely filled, with a bunch of spinach, bananas, and a couple of cans. The prices can be hard to swallow, she said: “Sometimes I get shocked, like, what?!” 

Still, the store has a full produce aisle and most of the essentials she needs.  And she often doesn’t have time to walk the 20 minutes to Target on Mission Street. 

The corner stores’ success may indicate a captive audience that doesn’t want to walk more than a couple of blocks for produce.

No matter its reputation as a drug-dealing, drug-imbibing neighborhood where corner stores are a dime a dozen, new shops keep opening up in the Tenderloin, and residents keep them on their toes. 

“How much is this?” a man holding a bag of Thai chilies asks at Amigo’s. 

“$4.62,” the clerk says. “Too much,” the customer grumbles, but buys them anyway. 

The Tenderloin’s more than 30,000 residents have been able to support at least four dozen corner stores. In the last five months, several more have opened their doors, and other existing stores have been purchased by hopeful new owners. 

415 Market & Kitchen on Larkin and Ellis streets opened just two months ago. Across the street, there is a new Super Discount Market at 738 Larkin St., and another unmarked store at 565B Ellis St. Both opened about a year ago.

The new owners say they know the neighborhood or know the corner store business, and opened in the hope of adding some value, despite the apparent oversaturation of bodegas.  

Yusuf Al-Amin, the manager at 415 Market, said his boss has run thriving smoke shops and liquor stores in Oakland, and wanted to expand into the more halal and wholesome area of simple groceries, but has been struggling to make ends meet in the new store. 

“It’s hard,” he said. “Sometimes you barely even break even trying to please everybody.” 

Longtime owners just don’t get it. “I don’t know why they open around here,” groaned Linda Tang, who works at Hiep Thanh, an Asian grocery just across the street from 415 Market that has operated for nearly 25 years. The pandemic and competition have lost her some customers. 

Though more than 60 percent of the neighborhood’s residents have an average household income of less than $60,000 a year, it’s clear there’s money to be made in groceries here. The lack of a full-service grocery store, and the closing of the Safeway a mile away, has probably made it more feasible. 

Finding a niche 

Some of the Tenderloin’s corner stores sell alcohol, tobacco or smoking paraphernalia as an extra draw. Others get creative, selling meat or imports not found elsewhere. Still others have been raided and cited for hosting illegal gambling machines. But most just try to offer a different item or two. 

Serve Well Market opened a Chicken King stand a few months ago, with crunchy chicken available for as little as $2 a piece. Other stores have fresh meat and seafood counters, blend smoothies, or specialize in Asian or Latin American imported products. 

“You adjust. You sell this, you sell that. You try to attract as many shoppers as you can, just to stay in business,” said Willie, the owner of New Princess Market, which has a coffee counter and sells produce like mangoes and avocados. 

Hiep Thanh, for example, sells Asian cooking staples and boasts a rare fresh meat counter. “I think we’re doing okay, steady,” said Sai Ung, who works there. “Because everybody needs to eat.” The new stores opening on the block have affected sales only slightly, Ung said, because Hiep Thanh has a loyal customer base. 

Tuong Phong Market, another longtime Asian market on Ellis Street, says the store is doing well despite the new openings, because it sells specialty items from Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, according to Hanh, the manager. The store also has some of the widest offerings in the neighborhood, with items the neighborhood’s large Latinx community might purchase, like masa flour and La Morena chipotle peppers. Also, it accepts EBT, the system used for welfare food benefits. 

New Princess Market, meanwhile, sells liquor, which means it has an inherent advantage over other Tenderloin groceries: It gets to stay open late. Last July, then-Mayor London Breed put forward a resolution requiring food and retail stores in the Tenderloin to close from midnight to 5 a.m., on the grounds that they attract drug dealers. A last-minute amendment by Supervisor Dean Preston exempted liquor stores, which only have to stop selling alcohol after 2 a.m. 

That curfew, several shop owners said, was hurting business. 

Sam, a clerk at Rainbow Market and Deli, said the business lost 15 to 20 percent of its income thanks to the midnight curfew. Inside, the store offers a selection of fruits and vegetables and other typical grocery items. Despite the curfew, the conditions haven’t changed much, said Sam, who sometimes checks the surveillance cameras after he goes home and still sees people congregating out front on Larkin Street, even though the store is shut. 

Still, Sam said, Rainbow can’t raise its prices or it will risk losing customers to one of the many nearby stores. 

The clerk at a tiny, unmarked Ellis Street shop, who did not want to give her name, said her brother opened about a year ago after he lost his longtime job at a nearby store. Business, she said, has taken a hit with new stores opening and the curfew forcing them to close early. “Horrible, horrible, horrible,” said the clerk of the developments. 

Catering to the clientele

She said the store relies on community members, particularly EBT holders, getting to know her family and coming to their store. She and her customers know that prices are higher than at the chain stores, but the shop has a community feel and she tries to stock the basics her customers need: Bread, tortillas, meat, milk. In the corner of the store, two women catch up on gossip; out on the sidewalk, passersby greet her enthusiastically. 

In turn, many of her customers rely on the Ellis Street shop, as they rarely leave their apartments, let alone the neighborhood. Those who did, the clerk said, relied on the Safeway in the Fillmore until it closed.

“We have a lot of people upstairs that have a lot of anxiety and don’t come out during the day,” the clerk said of the apartment building above the store. “They can’t do that no more, because we’re not open,” she said of the curfew that has them closing at midnight, instead of staying open 24 hours.  

A man came in for sliced deli meats and bread, and paid with an EBT card. The salami he wanted wasn’t in stock, but the clerk reassured him warmly: “I’m gonna go to the store and get that salami for you, okay?” 

As they struggle to stay relevant, shopkeepers like this one continually ask customers, and this reporter, what they might want to see stocked in the store. 

Yusuf Al-Amin, the store manager at 415 Market & Kitchen, said he tries to appeal to customers with low prices, because he recognizes that many Tenderloin shoppers are low-income, and hopes that will bring in customers. “This area, they overcharge the residents like a motherfucker. If we were in the avenues or Nob Hill, it would make more sense to overcharge.” 

So far, the store has struggled to distinguish itself from the rest, and so the “kitchen” part of the market and kitchen hasn’t come to fruition yet. Al-Amin said the original plan was to sell fresh meat and Mediterranean food. But for now, most of the massive store, once a Vietnamese restaurant, is empty or untouched; the meat display fridges, the tubs in the commercial ice cream fridge, deep fryers and grills behind the counter. 

The store was only able to start offering a small selection of fresh produce last week, months after opening. 

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, a woman comes into 415 Market pushing a child in a stroller, scans each aisle before shaking her head and leaving empty-handed. 

Al-Amin sighs. “See?”