Almquist Lands First SoCal Location of Asian Grocer T&T

An Orange County developer with a budding reputation for spicing up retail centers with unique mixes of tenants has landed a key main ingredient for his latest curation at Great Park Neighborhoods in Irvine.

Dan Almquist has landed Vancouver, Canada-based Asian grocery chain T&T to The Canopy, a 12-acre retail center in the works at Terrapin and Beacon roads, the Orange County Register reported.

T&T is the largest Asian grocery chain in Canada, and recently set out to expand to the U.S. It will take 35,000 square feet at The Canopy, located squarely amid large concentrations of Chinese-Americans, Korean-Americans and Japanese-Americans, among other Asian communities in Irvine.

The Canopy and new T&T store will serve a segment of the Great Park Neighborhoods section of Irvine, a former U.S. Marine Corps base that has become a central development of the city over the course of decades. The closest brick-and-mortar grocery options for residents of the area immediately surrounding The Canopy are Ralphs and Trader Joe’s stores about 2 miles away and Pavilions about 5 miles away.

The chain also plans to establish a U.S. headquarters at 975 Imperial Boulevard in Brea, about 20 miles north of Irvine.

Almquist is planning on an opening in late 2026 for his Irvine project, which will mark a scaling from the developer’s River Street Marketplace in San Juan Capistrano in South Orange County. Almquist opened the 60,000-square-foot center with 30 tenants, including a smattering of retail shops, a pilates studio and a food hall.

The Irvine center is about 50 percent bigger, at 91,000 square feet, and has an anchor squarely in the mold of the “daily needs retailer” that emerged as a strong point during the pandemic and has remained a bright spot since.

Almquist has plans for a 25,000-square-foot center that will count restaurants as the attraction, much like the Rodeo 39 food hall he developed in Stanton and a similar concept dubbed Rodeo 72 due in Whittier.

— Jerry Sullivan