Owners of Viengchan Oriental Market in Brooklyn Park to reopen Cooper’s Foods site in St. Paul in October
By early October, the soon-to-be-shuttered Cooper’s Foods grocery store on West Seventh Street in St. Paul will reopen as a Southeast Asian grocery, according to the real estate broker who connected the Cooper family to the family that runs the Viengchan Oriental Market in Brooklyn Park.
“That’s good news,” said Santiago Padilla, a longtime resident of St. Paul’s West Side who drives to West Seventh for some of his groceries. “I shop at the Asian stores. They have good prices.”
The news, first reported this week by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, ends weeks of speculation from customers and employees, many of whom had treated the arrival of the Asian grocer as a fait accompli.
“It was an off-market deal so it wasn’t public,” explained Hayden Hulsey, one of three commercial brokers who worked on the transaction for RE/MAX Results as dual agents representing both the Yang and Cooper families. Gary Cooper leased the store back from the Yangs with the intent of selling off his remaining inventory this month, Hulsey said.
A 50% off sale appeared to have done the trick, leaving most of the grocery’s shelves picked clean as of Tuesday evening. The store will close Thursday as Cooper’s, reopening around Oct. 1 under the Viengchan brand.
The neighborhood is about 3% Asian, according to demographic reports, but several customers at Cooper’s on Tuesday said that wasn’t a concern. Instead, they expressed relief at the prospect of continuity in an area with no other grocer for more than a mile around.
“It feels great,” said Viola Seals, 89, a longtime Cooper’s customer who was happy to learn that her neighborhood grocer would survive, albeit with changes.
“I think it’s really important that the community has access to fresh and affordable food,” said Meg Duhr, board president with the West Seventh/Fort Road Federation. “I hope it’s successful. Without that, West Seventh is really kind of a food desert. There’s a lot of folks who don’t have cars in the neighborhood, a lot of senior citizens. … It’ll be interesting to see.”
A Hmong-owned family business
The brokers — who included Mark Hulsey and Doug Harris — had helped the owners of Viengchan Oriental Market acquire their Brooklyn Park property a few years ago and then purchase the Cooper’s store at 633 W. Seventh St., which has been serving the West Seventh Street community near the High Bridge since the 1990s. A call to the Brooklyn Park location was not immediately returned.
The market’s website advertises Thai, Laotian and Hmong cuisine, though following minor construction updates, it will likely open in the fall with grocery offerings geared as well to longtime patrons.
“I think this store will have more of an American flair to it, to keep the Cooper’s customers around,” Hayden Hulsey said.
He said the buyer — whom he identified only as the Yang family — had issued the following statement:
“We are a Hmong-owned and operated family business. With the high concentration of Hmong and Asian people in and around the Twin Cities areas as well as the growing popularity of certain Asian merchandise and cuisine, our goal is to expand our services in the area to meet the needs and demands of our community. We hope and believe that we’ll be bringing more than just another market into the area, but we’ll be bringing new energy and experiences along with us. The goal is not just to serve the Asian community, but the community as a whole. We would love to have local support from the nearby communities and to continue to serve all of you.”
New owners
St. Paul City Council Member Rebecca Noecker said she has had no personal interactions with the new owners. But Noecker — a resident of the West Side — said she was relieved that the area would maintain a grocery. Otherwise, the nearest Mississippi Market and Lunds & Byerlys grocers are more than 1.5 miles away in either direction.
“A lot of people on the West Side funnel down to West Seventh, because it’s the closest grocery they have,” she said.
Five generations of Coopers have stocked groceries at two locations along West Seventh Street and at the family’s more than century-old Chaska store.
The Cooper’s Foods’ Highland Park site in the Sibley Plaza strip mall closed in 2017, though an Aldi supermarket has since opened there. The 107-year-old Chaska store closed in early March, with Gary Cooper citing at the time competition from big box stores.
On Tuesday, Gary Cooper didn’t have much to say about next steps.
“Why don’t you just wait to see what happens?” said Cooper, in a brief phone interview. “I don’t know what the people who bought the building want to do. Next week they’ll be in the building. Talk to them.”
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