Harin Lee of Hanaromart Asian Grocery Store, joined us for a brief chat at the Brisbane Franchising & Business Opportunities Expo, October 2022.

We covered some of the key aspects of the Hanaromart franchise business, including their position in the market and growth targets, the type of people that are best suited, what she loves about the business, and any common misconceptions about the brand or industry, and more…

What is your business?

"We are in an Asian grocery market and at the same time we are a distributor, wholesale distributor. 

Where are you located?

Our head office is located in Brisbane with our warehouse. This size is 8000 square metres for our warehouse and with other branches we have 22 different branches in Queensland and we're planning to open another branch in New South Wales. Sydney. 

What do you love about the business and what you do?

Well, we love foods and I love foods because seafood is one of the essential factors in our lives and we are more than happy to offer or provide our customers to enjoy them and then to by offering like agent food products and product range to them. 

We would like to introduce them more of like Asian. 5000 years of age and history and cultures, yeah.

And then we love to, we would like to encourage them to know more about Asian food and culture. I know they already know it's really famous, but get them to know more about it and then reach out to more local customers. 

What do you look for in the right-fit person to be a franchise owner?

I would love (and) like our franchisees to love their foods, too. 

And then I think it is a good way for people who know how to cook and then have those have the backgrounds of cooking would help more them to understand about our industry and our product lines at the same time. And also if they have if they are responsible for selling and not only Asian food but also food products to others.

What's a common misconception you believe people have about your brand or niche?

The typical typical perception will be the Asian store is only for Asian people. For us, it's the same. 

So Asian food, Asian grocery store is not for.... it's not only for Asian people, it's also for local people. 

And then since K culture K (culture) is on trend at the moment, it's mainstream in the world. So that's a point that we would like to let them know that Asian food grocery store is not only for Asian people, but also we're really opened to local people at the same time.

What is your key focus for the next 12-18 months?

Well, our best aim is to expand our business up to 150 branches in five years. 

But like not mainly expanding business, just from that like point we're actually our aiming is not really differ from our visual actually our vision like I mentioned, our main vision will be to get encourage local people to get to know more about Asian food and Asian culture as well as histories. 

So I want, we would love... to inform them, to know that we have a like wider range of the product lines and and get to know more of like our backgrounds so that we can actually share the thoughts at the end of the day, yes."