The opening of a new grocery store in Orleans is giving residents hope their underserviced area will keep getting more stores, jobs and selection.
The new Asian Supercentre on Tenth Line Road was busy for its Wednesday opening (besides a brief power outage) with customers crowding the aisles for a variety of foods.
"We have Indian melon, bitter melon, the Chinese bitter melon, there's a Thai eggplant," said owner David Feng.
"What we are doing now by bringing all different communities together, everybody comes together under one roof to share each other's cultural differences, share different food."
"There is really nothing Asian that you want that isn't here," said one customer. "There's everything Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese . . . if you whatever it's here."
Notable for some shoppers is the fact they said Orleans rarely gets new stores.
"It's great because in Orleans we didn't have a store like that," "I'm really happy to have a store like so you can buy anything you want."
"We used to go to the one by the airport, so its nice to have something so convenient," said another.
The Asian Superstore is creating 160 new jobs, with more grocery stores coming to the area.
A new Farm Boy location is scheduled to open this summer in the parking lot of Place d'Orleans.
With a report from CTV Ottawa's Ellen Mauro
