Q&A with T&T’s Tina Lee

Q & A

T&T sets its sights on Montreal

CEO Tina Lee on the Asian grocery chain’s Quebec plans By Chris Powell

Tina Lee, CEO of T&T Supermarket In december, T&T Supermarket announced plans to open its first Quebec store on the Island of Montreal sometime within the next 12 to 24 months. The country’s largest Asian supermarket chain is “on a roll” says its CEO Tina Lee. Canadian Grocer caught up with Lee to ask why T&T is turning its attention to Quebec now, what the rollout will look like, and what’s next for the specialty banner.

Why is T&T entering the Quebec market

now? Robert Sawyer [COO with parent company Loblaw] had a lot to do with it. He lives in Montreal, and since joining the team he has come to know more about our business and loves it. He’s a very big driver [of the decision] and gives me more confidence that T&T can be successful in Montreal.

I’ve only visited Montreal a few times, and more often recently to make this decision, and I’ve really grown to admire the culture. They love and enjoy food. It’s part of French heritage to enjoy every bite of food. They [Montrealers] love to explore different flavours, and T&T should be part of that food ecosystem. We continue to have a lot of growth opportunities in the provinces in which we operate, and Loblaw has a good team on the ground in Quebec, so they’ve been very supportive in helping us take this big step. With Robert’s encouragement, this is why now is the time.

Had Montreal been on your radar prior to Robert Sawyer’s

arrival? It’s a very specific market … and we have to do more preparation to enter the province. We have a heightened awareness of that. Before that, we’d been focusing on the other three provinces in which we operate [British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario] to maximize our growth there. It’s easier and faster to grow our footprint [in those markets] but now we have a solid foundation and we’re ready to take that next step into the next province. While there are additional processes [required] to break through in Quebec, I’m confident it’s going to be worth it.

Other than language, are there cultural differences you have to account for? Do you anticipate it’s going to be radically different to other store openings in the coun-

try? I hope not. If T&T sticks to what we do best, I’m hoping the people of Montreal will come and enjoy exactly that. For us, the biggest piece we have to get right is the language. I’m not coming into Montreal with a store selling local cheese and wine. That’s not our forte. It’s to bring an Asian flair to Montrealers, which is what we do best. I think they’ll enjoy that.

Do you anticipate your product assortment will be different in any way, or will it mirror that of other T&T loca-

tions? It will largely mirror that of our other stores. But, the reason [we’re announcing this now] is … to open up the channel for local vendors.

Is this approach typical in other markets? This is differ-

ent. T&T stores are, in my view, quite complex and it takes time for a new department head or supervisor to learn the ropes and execute our business model. We think it’s going to take more than a year to train someone who doesn’t have any T&T experience to be able to efficiently manage a part of our store.

In Ontario, we don’t need to do that as we can transfer talent from other stores. Quebec is a new province, and we want to to hire French speakers. That’s the reason why we’re coming out early, to do recruiting and vendor outreach, even before we are announcing the exact location. We want to make sure the service offering is the best it can possibly be.

Can you talk a little bit about your growth strategy and where you’d like to be let’s say five years from now? T&T

is very opportunistic when it comes to locations—we evaluate each on their own merit as they come up. We’ll grow as the right locations come up. I’m really happy and proud of the team we’ve built, especially over these last couple of tough years. I think we’ve built a solid foundation, enough to position us for growth.

We have the confidence to step into mall locations, where traditionally supermarkets haven’t seen success. Fairview Mall [in Toronto] is the most recent announcement, but in October we opened in Willowbrook Shopping Centre in Langley, B.C. We are at Promenade Mall in Thornhill, Ont., we’re in Metro Town Mall in Burnaby, B.C., we’re in West Edmonton Mall, we’re in Lansdowne Centre in Richmond, B.C., so we have a successful track record where we feel there is still a lot of runway for growth for our model. That would likely make us one of the faster-growing banners in the country.

We are announcing today our first store in Montreal. Depending on whether the community likes it or not will define how many more stores we can open. I have no idea whether the people of Montreal will actually like what we do, and if they do, there’ll probably be more opportunities.