The Hong Kong Supermarket in New York City is located in the heart of Chinatown, a neighbourhood in lower Manhattan populated with one of the largest ethnic Chinese populations outside of Asia. Many immigrants have since then started their own businesses in the area, selling goods that are local to Asia, specifically from Hong Kong, Guang Dong and other southern Chinese provinces. The Hong Kong Supermarket is one of many businesses in the neighbourhood and is part of a chain store business that spans the United States. During my site visit, I noticed that despite the large number of people who shop at the Hong Kong Supermarket, there isn’t much variety of demographics among the customers. With the store specialising in selling imported Asian goods, the main customer group were ‘elderly Asian women’ who most likely are of the Chinatown Cantonese population. The Hong Kong supermarket may not be the most hospitable shopping environment and can be overly stimulating for those unfamiliar with the space. The lack of other customer groups may be due to this reason, or perhaps the lack of knowledge of Cantonese culture.

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With the opportunity to design something for this community, I was interested in creating something to easily introduce the essence of Cantonese culture, as found during the Hong Kong supermarket shopping experience, to those beyond the customers of ‘elderly Asian women’-- such as members of the younger generation or different ethnicities. To accomplish this, something new must be implemented into the space to attract new customers, while still keeping change to a minimum to maintain a sense of familiarity for regular customers. I experimented with several designs, such as the bookstore-inspired best-selling shelf, “Red White Blue” goody bags, and Hawker stall-inspired taste test stand, in the sketch model ideations before combining elements from each to finalise the idea.

 

In the new design, the space outside of the supermarket will be converted into an ‘instagrammable site’ inspired by ‘local market stalls’ found in Hong Kong wet markets. This bridges the gap between current and traditional design and utilises the viral nature of social media as an advertising platform. Besides being aesthetically pleasing, the space will also act as a sharing platform for Cantonese cuisine. Traditional recipes will be periodically posted on a board by the stall, and shoppers can buy goody bags packaged with the ingredients for ‘said recipe’. This creates an easy one-stop-shop experience, reducing the anxiety one feels from being in an unfamiliar space. Additionally, the goody bag design is inspired by the famous ‘red white blue’ originating from Hong Kong, inviting users to reuse them as shopping bags if they were to revisit the supermarket in the future.