The Importance of Multicultural Supermarkets

Written by Brendan Gieseke

When people talk about cultural identity, the conversation tends to orbit around language, tradition, and community. However, from my experience, food is never seen as equal in creating cultural closeness. Food is essential to daily life, and so while this idea might lead to a tendency to treat food as a casual phenomenon (even when engaging with others’ cultural foods), I’d argue that food is beyond integral to one’s cultural identity. 

Walking around a supermarket where the labels are in a clandestine language no one outside of the market’s walls understands is a unique phenomenon I’ve often been so grateful to experience. I’d see the walls with my favorite Japanese snacks: かっぱえびせん (Shrimp Chips), 醤油煎餅 (Soy Sauce Rice Crackers), and カルピスソーダ (Calpico Soda). But the food doesn’t just bring gustatory happiness. It attracts the people within the community who are of mutual heritage. The supermarket is filled with strangers who all happen to speak the same language as me, who, despite being unknown people in my life, feel familiarly friendly. Merchant owners know me and identify me as one of the Japanese speakers in the community. 

In conversations around culture, food rarely gets the credit it deserves. And, the lack of emphasis on the importance of cultural supermarkets seems to be destined for a similar fate. Arguably, food is the most sensory and immediate form of cultural memory that exists. The supermarket is the physical embodiment of this need.

For immigrants and first- and second-generation communities, multicultural supermarkets are often one of the few tangible connections to a home country that may be thousands of miles away. The right spice, the right brand of noodles, the specific kind of rice that your grandmother used are conveniently there in one place; these aren't preferences, but realistically justified necessities. When that access doesn't exist, one’s connection to their culture truly has a tendency to be placed in jeopardy. To be deprived of the ingredients that allow you to practice your food culture is, in a very real sense, to be deprived of a form of cultural expression. Identity is a human right. And with the chain of logic, multicultural supermarkets, in their own unassuming way, help protect the culture.

But living in New York City means I have options most people don't. The city's density and diversity create a kind of cultural infrastructure that makes taking food diversity a given rather than a privilege. I mean, the Borough of Queens is called the “Borough of the World” and is considered the most linguistically diverse urban area in the world! Clearly, there is an injustice in the relationship between urban size and the number of cultural foods you can access. Smaller cities, suburban areas, and rural communities frequently offer little to nothing; there is no convenient local Japanese supermarket, Brazilian supermarket, or Indian supermarket… and even with the occasional cultural foods, they usually only represent the tip of the iceberg (think: Japan is more than just sushi, whereas Brazil is more than just an açai bowl.) Truly, when the context of location is considered, multicultural supermarkets become much more meaningful; they truly can be the one opportunity to learn about one’s culture. 

Multicultural supermarkets, though, aren't only for the communities they're named after. They're an open door. For anyone curious enough to walk through the aisles of a Korean grocery store, a West African market, or a Latin American bodega, the experience is an education in itself. Your hike comes with the acquisition of new ingredients, unfamiliar brands, and entire culinary traditions sitting on shelves just waiting to be explored. Food has always been one of the most accessible entry points into a culture that isn't your own, and multicultural supermarkets make that entry point available to everyone. There is something genuinely community-building about a store that serves as both a cultural anchor for one group and a point of curiosity for another. And in worlds where political divides can be driven by cultural differences, these multicultural supermarkets just might play a keystone role in bridging cultural gaps and promoting humanity. 

Multicultural supermarkets are easy to overlook as simple businesses. But they are the very pillars that can hold up communities and preserve heritage even in foreign countries. They can make immigration a little less isolating and allow for generational cultural values and knowledge to be passed on. They offer, on a lucky day, a rare Calpico popsicle to a Japanese kid who needs exactly that. And in doing so, the multicultural supermarket achieves a goal that many corporations fail to create: belonging.

Thumbnail Credit:

https://www.pexels.com/photo/fruits-in-the-supermarket-11547378/