How far should mainstream retailers adapt for multicultural shoppers?

In Vancouver, multicultural retailing cannot be confined to one aisle. Half the city’s residents were born outside Canada, while its population encompasses at least 244 cultural origins. Chinese people account for more than a quarter of residents, making them the city’s largest ethnic community. This creates a significant growth opportunity for grocery retailers, but also one of their most difficult format challenges: how far can a mainstream supermarket adapt to its local communities without losing the familiarity and broad appeal of the core proposition?

The new Safeway (from Sobeys) at Oakridge Park offers one answer. Serving a catchment with a particularly large Chinese population, the store has a pronounced Chinese influence, from English and Traditional Chinese signage to live seafood, dim sum, sushi and ranges integrated across multiple categories.

Yet it does not attempt to recreate a specialist Chinese supermarket. Sobeys describes it as an “accessible multicultural proposition”, a useful distinction in a city where cultural relevance must be balanced with wide appeal.

Responding to Vancouver’s Chinese community

Although Vancouver is exceptionally diverse, the strategy at Oakridge responds to a much more specific local reality. Chinese people account for 25.9% of Vancouver’s population, but their representation is higher around the store. Across different parts of Oakridge, Chinese residents account for between 46% and 58% of the population.

These numbers explain why a conventional international aisle would be an inadequate response. The opportunity reaches across the weekly shop, including produce, meat, seafood, bakery, frozen food, packaged grocery and prepared meals. Relevance is shaped as much by freshness, range depth and preparation as by the number of imported products on the shelf.

Why a broad multicultural offer is rarely enough

Canada’s leading grocery groups have traditionally built propositions around defined communities. Loblaw operates T&T Supermarket, Sobeys has developed Chalo! FreshCo for South Asian shoppers and Metro owns the Mediterranean-focused Adonis. Each has a clear cultural centre of gravity, even when its appeal extends beyond the core audience.

Formats designed to serve several distinct communities under a single multicultural identity have had less success. “Multicultural” may describe the market, but it is often too broad to guide a store strategy. Chinese, South Asian, Filipino, Korean and Middle Eastern shoppers cannot be served credibly by grouping together products whose main shared characteristic is that they sit outside the conventional Canadian range. This can produce breadth without authority. A retailer carries products from many countries but lacks depth in fresh departments and meal solutions that underpin authenticity.

Safeway takes a more precise approach. The ‘Global Market’ provides a destination for international ranges, while Chinese and wider Asian products are integrated into the categories where shoppers expect to find them. Live seafood tanks, hotpot meats, Asian bakery products, dim sum and freshly prepared sushi reflect established ways of shopping, cooking and eating.

Adapting the format, not only the range

This is where the store moves beyond multicultural merchandising. Packaged products can be added relatively easily. Fresh food and foodservice require different sourcing relationships, preparation skills, equipment and operating capabilities. They reveal whether a retailer understands the community or has simply expanded its range.

The store nevertheless remains recognisably Safeway. Its mainstream ranges and familiar departments retain accessibility for the wider catchment. Bilingual navigation supports Chinese-speaking shoppers without making the store feel closed to everyone else.

Safeway is not attempting to compete with T&T on the full depth of its Asian proposition. T&T has built cultural credibility through decades of expertise, with fresh food, bakery, seafood and its in-store kitchen central to the format. It applies selected elements of that thinking within a mainstream supermarket.

Finding the right role for mainstream retail

“Retailers race to capture the world on their shelves” is one of our key trends for 2026. Yet this store suggests that the starting point should not be the number of cultures represented in the catchment or the number of international products a retailer can add. Retailers should begin by identifying where local expectations require a different level of range, service or expertise from the existing supermarket offer. At Oakridge, the priority investment areas were seafood, meat, bakery and prepared foods, where range depth, freshness and preparation strongly influence store choice among Chinese shoppers.

This provides a more practical route for mainstream retailers. Identify the shopping missions where the existing format lacks credibility, concentrate investment in the departments that materially influence store choice, and assess whether those gaps can be closed within the core banner. Where the required changes would reshape most of the proposition, a specialist format may still be necessary. At Oakridge, the retailer is testing whether targeted adaptation can persuade Chinese shoppers to use Safeway for more of their grocery shop, rather than simply buying a wider selection of Asian products there.