Almquist breaks ground on site of SoCal’s first T&T Supermarket

Local development company Almquist broke ground on its latest project, The Canopy at Great Park in Irvine on April 24, where the first SoCal T&T Supermarket will open.

“The Great Park community has long awaited a retail and dining hub that not only serves their needs but also enhances their everyday lifestyle,” chief executive officer of Almquist, Dan Almquist said at the ground-breaking ceremony.

Almquist is responsible for other Orange County retail destinations such as River Street Marketplace in San Juan Capistrano and Rodeo 39 Public Market in Stanton. The new project is designed to serve the expanding Great Park Neighborhoods. The Canopy at Great Park will be a 12-acre experiential retail and dining destination, roughly 90,000-square-feet in size with chef-driven restaurants and lifestyle brands anchored by the specialty grocer.

T&T Supermarket is Canada’s largest Asian grocery chain. Chief executive Tina Lee spoke at the ceremony that included a live music performance and refreshments.

Tina Lee, chief executive of T&T Supermarket Inc., and Dan Almquist, founding president of Almquist, break ground on The Canopy at Great Park in Irvine, which will be the site of Orange County’s first T&T Supermarket.

(Tony Wodarck)

“We are a really unique Asian food destination,” said Lee. “We are not a cookie-cutter grocery store. Dan Almquist came up to Canada and saw what we did and in his view there is nothing like it in California. He wanted to be part of bringing us to Orange County.”

T&T Supermarket has more than 33 stores in Canada and opened its first U.S. location in Bellevue, Wash. in 2024. The popular grocery store was started by Lee’s mother, Cindy Lee, nearly 30 years ago, with the ambition of becoming the Asian answer to chain grocery stores like Safeway, Lee recounted to the crowd. The Orange County store is projected to be a 34,000-square-foot space.

“Our sizes in Canada range and this will be on the smaller scale, but we were able to bring a real creative element to the store,” said Lee. “Today you are looking at a piece of dirt, but we are going from the ground up.”

Besides stocking produce, dried goods and canned goods from all over Asia, T&T is also known for its prepared foods. The in-house bakery offers fresh dim sum and more than 100 varieties of Asian baked goods, including viral sensations like Napoleon Portuguese egg tarts. Shoppers can also look forward to freshly made jian bing (savory Chinese crepes) and Taiwanese-style rice rolls. T&T also has a line private label products, like Xiao Long Bao, or pork soup dumplings, Korean kalbi marinade and seaweed snacks. Like any good grocery store, whole cooked chicken is popular item but T&T puts their on spin on the poultry staple.

A rendering of T&T Supermarket, set to open its first Southern California store in Irvine’s Great Park in Winter 2026.

(Courtesy of Almquist)

“We have really a great team of in-house chefs and we are always innovating,” said Lee. “We have a new product called the Crispy Papa chicken, which is a whole butterflied deep-friend chicken and we recently came out with two other flavors.”

The chicken will be available in the original Crispy Papa Chicken variety and the new Roasted Garlic Papa Chicken and Roasted Spicy Mala Papa Chicken flavors.

T&T Supermarket is set to open at The Canopy in late 2026.