AMMAN — Wesam Abu Jreas ascended the four steps to his
office on Al-Buhtori Street in Amman, Jordan. The sleeves of his baby blue sweater bunched around his elbows. He was
framed by iridescent palettes of packaged dessert lining the shelves of
Asia Market, Jordan’s top supplier of East Asian products since 2018.
اضافة اعلان
Abu Jreas sat by his desk, where receipts, pens, and crushed
paper cups mounted, and yanked out a karaoke microphone, speaking directly to
the scurrying figures on his surveillance screen.
“Hey, help the lady in the Thai section,” he said to one of
his employees between sips of Nescafé.
“No, no. The one in pink.”
Lines of shoppers — a mix of the Kingdom’s
East Asian community and Korean drama fans — thronged his store, their clanging steel baskets filled to the brim. The office
chair creaked underneath him to a T-Pain beat from the early 2000s as he
surveyed the screen for any signs of dismay or confusion.
According to his rulebook for supermarket success, customers
should never be left unattended — even
during a pandemic.
Abu Jreas opened Asia Market four years ago in order to
offer Jordan’s large East Asian community a feeling
of home. The idea stemmed from his earlier business endeavors, where he stocked
a precursor to Asia Market with Chinese and Thai products to cater to East
Asian communities in Al-Karak, a city in southern Jordan.
“As time went by, our customers started asking us for
products we had never heard of before,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “So we did our research,
expanded our selection, taught ourselves a couple of things, and now here we
are, making our own firm tofu and growing our own bean sprouts.”
Abu Jreas’ customers have introduced him to over 5,000
products since he founded Asia Market, from curry pastes, fish cakes, and spicy Korean rice cakes to coconut pulp juice, Maxim coffee sticks, and
rainbow tapioca pearls. He also found personal pleasure in tapping into the
Korean and Filipino snack markets.
“I just love how natural they taste,” he said. “I keep
grabbing Korean corn chips and Filipino dried peas from the snack stand. As a
Jordanian, I never knew my taste palette would become this sophisticated.”
Yuri, one of Abu Jreas’ regular Filipino customers, had been
disheartened to learn that her favorite supermarket was taking a break during
the government-imposed lockdown, which spanned March, April, and May
of 2020.
These days, she shops at Asia Market at least once a week.
“I’ve been coming to this store since it opened,” she said,
balancing a bag of air-dried fish on top of her basket. “Their prices are so reasonable, and it’s just
like the food we have back home.”
A stranger with a platinum bob in a red tracksuit brushed shoulders
with Yuri, and they engaged in friendly conversation. Then a black-clad
employee of Abu Jreas’ walked over and asked if they needed any assistance with
their shopping.
“See? They’re just so nice to us here,” she said. “They
treat us so well.”
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