Grocery Stores
A busy Chinese supermarket in the plaza on No. 3 Road, popular for a well-stocked produce floor, a barbecue counter locals rate for leaner char siu, and bulk dace fish paste. Cashiers work fast; finding a parking spot is the only hard part.
Weekday mornings are the only sane time to do this shop. New Empire occupies a plaza unit on No. 3 Road in the Golden Village, and the plazas along that corridor were laid out for a Richmond with far fewer people in it. Saturday afternoon in one of those lots is a slow circling exercise. Go at ten on a Tuesday and the whole errand takes half the time, which is more useful than any other piece of advice about the place.
Chinese supermarkets in this city are not a niche. They are the mainstream grocery infrastructure, and they compete on very specific things: how fast the greens turn over, whether the barbecue counter carves generously, whether the fish is still moving. A store like this one is doing a different job from the big Canadian chains a few blocks away. Most households here shop both, buying vegetables and prepared meat in one place and paper towels in another, and nobody finds that strange.
Bring your own bags and bring a plan. These are dense stores with narrow aisles and fast checkouts, and browsing is not really the intended mode. Anyone new to shopping this way should walk the produce floor first and buy for the next two days rather than the next week, because turnover is the whole point of the format. The surrounding plaza has enough around it that a grocery run can absorb two or three other errands without a second drive.
In the Golden Village neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Other grocery stores and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
Over 10,000 square feet of Japanese goods on Alderbridge Way, most of it imported directly. Bento, sushi and hot food made in-house each morning, plus frozen fish, seasonings, cosmetics and kitchenware. It closes at 6pm, so go earlier than you think.
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A West Cambie Japanese grocer that stocks the specific things other stores skip: baking and cooking ingredients, wagyu and sashimi-grade fish, regional snacks, and hot food to take away. Staff move between Japanese and English without any fuss.
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A mid-size Asian supermarket on Odlin Road in West Cambie, quieter than the No. 3 Road giants. Rice in every format, sauces, frozen dim sum, and a produce section priced for people cooking Chinese food at home most nights of the week.
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A big, cheap Asian supermarket off Sexsmith Road that stays open until midnight every night of the year. Locals go for aggressive produce and seafood pricing, a busy barbecue and hot-food counter, and restocking that makes late shopping worthwhile.
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An older, no-frills Park Road supermarket that has outlasted flashier neighbors. Free parking, narrow aisles, and a genuinely pan-Asian shelf mix, with Chinese, Filipino, Malaysian and Indonesian pantry items sitting side by side at fair prices.
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The Vancouver chain's largest store, about 19,000 square feet on Garden City Road and open 8:30am to 10pm daily. Straightforward Chinese-Canadian grocery shopping: fresh meat and seafood counters, stacked produce, bulk dry goods and sauces.
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