KH Supermarket

KH Supermarket, also called Kun Heng Supermarket or KH Market, was a family-owned Cambodian grocery store on Anaheim Street in Long Beach, California. For decades it served Cambodia Town and the local Khmer community with Khmer food and Cambodian, Lao and Thai ingredients. It closed in June 2021.

Organization details
Type	Cultural business
Business type	grocery
Focus areas	Cambodian grocery
Subjects	Food & Foodways
City	Long Beach
State / province	California
Country	United States
Address	915 E Anaheim St, Long Beach, CA 90813
Operating status	active

History

The Better Business Bureau gives January 1, 1992, as the date the business started, and in 2016 it listed Bon Pang as the owner. The market passed through several owners over the years. In December 2018 the head owner, Bondara Pang, said his family had owned it for the past twelve years; the family's petition that month said it had served the community for more than fourteen years. The Cambodia Town resident and advocate praCh Ly said the market had "been here from the beginning" of the community.

In November 2018 the market received a mailer and then notices of a hearing on a plan to demolish its small strip mall and build a multi-tenant property with a fast-food drive-through. Pang said the property owner had not told the market about the plans, and that the new buildings had no room for a shop of its size. He said the business could not survive a move away from Anaheim Street. The family gathered supporters on social media, searched the lease for terms the demolition might break, and started a petition on December 3, 2018, asking that the market be kept in the new plans. The petition, which named Council Member Dee Andrews and the property owner as the decision makers, collected nearly 10,000 signatures. The meeting that could have decided the market's future was put off until the new year. The demolition and drive-through plans were later canceled after community organizing, and the market stayed open two more years.

The market served the community through the COVID-19 pandemic. Facing a higher rent, it did not renew its lease and closed in June 2021. In 2022 Brandon Soun and Lan Nguyen told its story in the documentary short Conversations at the Register. The filmmakers say the market was forced to close by gentrification, and made the film to mourn its loss and celebrate how it nurtured the community. The film had its Long Beach premiere on August 27, 2022, at the Mark Twain Neighborhood Library, at an event presented by Visual Communications with the United Cambodian Community and Cambodia Town Thrives.

Food

The shelves held Cambodian and other Southeast Asian foods alongside American products, and a hot-foods section served customers. Seafood was chopped, sorted and packed in the back of the store. The store stocked freshly made Cambodian desserts, some of them sweeter and often funkier versions of similar Vietnamese sweets. They included rice dumplings filled with shredded coconut and caramelized palm sugar laced with fish sauce, and nom ko, a chilled pumpkin custard of pumpkin, rice flour, mung beans, coconut milk and sugar, packed in small plastic cups. It also sold akao tnout, a yellow pastry like a muffin, made with coconut and palm sugar; anksom jak, sweet rice and coconut milk wrapped in a banana leaf; and anksom sach chrouk, its savory counterpart of sticky rice with peppers, pork belly and mung bean.

Community

Many customers spoke two languages, and the store offered a bilingual newspaper. For the shopper Cheata Chap, it was one of the few stores that carried the staples of her childhood. The owner's daughter, Pichivy Pang, worked there six days a week in 2018. The market also supported athletics at Long Beach Polytechnic High School.

See also

• Cambodia Town, Long Beach
• All organizations

References