LOS ANGELES—Coinciding with the Chinese Moon Festival, Walmart held a community celebration in on Chinatown to celebrate the opening of its Downtown LA Neighborhood Market on Thursday, September 19.
The grand opening ceremony was held at 7:30am, and started with brief remarks from community leaders and store manager Kenny Tran. The program also included a traditional lion dance performance by the East Wind Foundation for Youth.
“We welcome Walmart and are very excited to have the Neighborhood Market in our community to offer affordable grocery options,” Los Angels Area Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Gary Toebben said in a statement.
“This new Neighborhood Market has offered 65 much-needed jobs to local residents and has already served as an anchor to drive new businesses to the Grand Plaza building,” Toebben added.
Carol Schatz, president and CEO of the Central City Association of Los Angeles, said in a statement that the neighborhood market will drive continued growth and development to the downtown area and supports the Association’s “vision for a lively downtown community.”
More options
Located at 701 W. Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, the store offers a new shopping options for local residents, Tran said.
“We’re bringing more options for the community as far as [being] another grocer around here, that they can go to for different things,” Tran said.
“Here at our neighborhood market, we have items that [you wouldn’t] normally find in a local grocer. We are a general grocer. We do carry a lot more variety here,” he added.
Tran said that customers will be able find everything they need at Walmart, ranging from produce, grocery items, and a full service pharmacy that offers $4 prescriptions.
The store’s pharmacy offers customers with even more convenience when filling or transferring prescriptions, receiving one-on-one consultation with a pharmacist, or purchasing over-the-counter medications.
The neighborhood market also offers site-to-store delivery services, meaning if a customer finds a product from any of the thousands of Walmart locations across the country, he or she can have it delivered to the Downtown LA location for free.
Prior to Thursday’s grand opening celebration, the neighborhood market soft opened on Friday, September 13, to give residents and the local community a chance to preview the store. According to a statement, the store has already served more than 10,000 customers.
According to Tran, he soft opening was met with a very “impactful” and “positive” support from the community.
“What I keep hearing from the customers is that it’s about convenience, it’s about the products that they can get, and it’s also about the selection that we provide,” Tran said.
Recy Hill, a 55-year old Filipina, said that she was so excited about the opening of the Walmart Neighborhood Market because of its proximity to her residence. She said that she was so glad and excited that she felt that she had to come to join the grand opening.
Giving back
Aside from the community celebration at the grand opening of the Neighborhood Market, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation also gave out more than $40,000 in grants to local organizations that serve the community and the causes that Walmart associates and customer care about.
Organizations that received grants include the Chinatown Service Center ($1,500), the Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual & Performing Arts ($1,000), Association of the US Army – Greater Los Angeles ($1,000), Los Angeles Fire Department ($1,000), Friends of the Chinese American Museum ($10,000), and the Plaza de la Raza Child Development Services ($15,000).
(Advertising Supplement)