H Mart, a giant Asian food chain, opens its first Utah store (2024)

Utahns excited for the new store, which is called the largest among the chain’s nearly 100 locations.

Friends Vivian Lee and Viviane Nguyen couldn’t wait for Utah’s first H Mart, a grocery chain known for its wide selection of Korean and other Asian foods, to open at 10 a.m. Friday.

“We got here at 9 a.m.,” Lee, 24, said while shopping in the side dish corner of the 100,000-square foot supermarket at 1442 W. 9000 South in West Jordan — the largest among the chain’s at least 97 U.S. stores, and the first of its kind in Utah.

“We’ve been waiting for H Mart to open for years now,” Lee said. “So whenever we travel to different states, H Mart is always one of our go-to places. And so as soon as we saw H Mart opening here, all of us just, like, gathered together. [We] celebrated [and] cried a little, and now we’re here.”

Nguyen, 22, said that “H Mart has all the foods that I love, and foods that you can’t find at other supermarkets.”

The Vivian[e]s weren’t alone in their excitement. A line of Asian cuisine lovers stretched close to 100 feet along the side of the store before Friday’s ribbon cutting, some of them waiting for an hour.

When asked what was at the top of their shopping list, Lee and Nguyen both shouted, in unison, “raw marinated crab!” Unfortunately for them, though, the marinated crab wasn’t ready for sale on opening day.

For the Vivian[e]s, H Mart meant more than just a supplier of nostalgic foods.

“Growing up as a Korean American in Utah for most of my life, it’s been really interesting to see how the Korean community — and the Asian community as a whole — has just grown a lot in the last couple of years,” Lee said. “Seeing an H Mart open just feels like a really big cultural hub for me. It feels really warming to see a place of safety, a place of community.”

The store’s opening Friday was three years in the making — delayed significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’ve been preparing the opening before COVID, so it’s been delayed quite a while,” said Chandler Yoon, a staffer at the Utah store, speaking in Korean. “We were able to open the shop after resolving the supplier problem we were facing due to COVID-19.”

Many customers expressed how long they have yearned for the Utah H Mart’s opening.

Younghee Kim, who lives in West Valley City, said in Korean that “I got really tired of waiting. But now I’m so happy that it’s finally opened, and it feels like my birthday. There’s no better gift.”

Sharon Kim, 70 and a Utah resident for 24 years, said, also in Korean, that “Koreans really waited for this. It kept getting delayed, so I’ve been waiting and waiting, and rushed over here because it said it was opening. My heart feels full. I’ve been to one in California, but I was surprised to see this one is bigger.”

H Mart boasts a colorful range of Korean items, but it also features a wide selection of Mexican, European, Japanese and Taiwanese snacks — attracting a diverse portfolio of customers.

“I’ve been waiting since they started building for it to be opened,” said 22-year-old Maylene Devai, who lives in Kearns.

Harry Guan, 27, who grew up in China, said he wanted to browse the food selection as soon as the store opened. “My wife was just making a comment on the other two major players around the area, which are both Chinese groceries, [that] there are definitely not as many options as the ones here,” Guan said.

The heated reaction from Utahns came as a surprise to H Mart management. Ryan Chung, director of the Utah store, attributed the first-day success to the power of social media.

“We couldn’t put out any advertising for the opening, because we had to open doors just two days after we received our permit,” Chung said in Korean.

The 100,000 square feet of space — on the site of a former KMart store — pushes the West Jordan store to the rank of the biggest H Mart in the United States, Chung said. About 30,000 square feet is used for warehouse space, and around 50,000 square feet holds the marketplace, he said. The remaining 20,000 square feet, he said, is allocated for future tenants.

“Eight tenants will come into the store, and we will have [a] Korean barbecue, restaurants, a bakery, and a boba shop open by October and November,” Chung said.