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Kin Wah Leung is in his element, cajoling one customer into buying a melon that is super-sweet and pointing out to another that a big cauliflower was freshly picked. They nod and take his advice. He moves on to banter with another shopper, pointing out the tomatoes that he likes the best.
Leung has had a lot of practice sweet-talking customers in the produce section. This week is the 40th anniversary of Kin’s Farm Market, a company that Leung’s family built from the humblest of beginnings to a chain with 24 locations from Abbotsford to North Vancouver.
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“I was twenty-something back then. I am now over 60 years old,” Leung, who is president of the company, said at one of their two Richmond locations, laughing and shaking his head at the time gone by.
Leung’s parents moved their family from Guangzhou in southern China to Vancouver in 1981. In the early days, the family rented the attic of a house in the Hastings-Sunrise neighbourhood. His father and younger brother worked as dishwashers while his mother found work as a babysitter.
Leung and his sister started out working for two years at a won-ton noodle soup shop in Chinatown. One day, on a break, a friend invited him to travel around Vancouver. They made a stop at Granville Island.
“It was very busy, packed with people, and he said, ‘Look, you can rent a table and start a business.’ ”
For four years they rented an eight-foot-long table at the market and all five members of the family worked produce sales. In the beginning, the business consisted of fewer than 20 products displayed on the table.
“We were selling romaine lettuce,” said Leung, recalling how he had never even eaten romaine lettuce when his family drove out to a farm on No. 5 Road in Richmond looking for a supplier.
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“I am Chinese, so I knew gai lan, bok choy, and yu choy, but not romaine leaves. Customers were asking for it, so we said to the farmer, ‘Can we have five or 10 cases?’ They were so fresh and big, people just grabbed at them. They were lining up for them.”
Their stall built a mini-following of customers. By 1987, the family decided to open its first store location in Richmond at the Blundell Centre.
“Then we didn’t have to set up a table every week in a different location,” said Leung.
It was a big leap and the family found mentors along the way, including among loyal customers who were more seasoned businesspeople. The family took small business courses to gain insights, and a few years later opened a second location in Ladner.
In the early 2000s, the family met Aaron Gillespie who was expanding his family’s COBS Bread chain from Australia into Canada. COBS is part of Bakers Delight, a franchise chain that Gillespie’s father started in Melbourne in 1981.
These days, where you see a Kin’s location, you’re likely to see a COBS across the street or next door. The first “co-location” in 2003 was at Park Royal in West Vancouver.
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“In the early days, it was to follow their great sites,” said Gillespie. “Now, if we see a piece of real estate for both of us, it can make an OK site into something much better for both.”
Today, Leung still helms the company, but control is also shifting to a third generation with his stepson, Victor Lau, taking a more active role as COO. Queenie Chu, Leung’s wife and Lau’s mother, who started with the company as a cashier, is now a director.
At a time when small businesses of all kinds face a tough environment and consumers are watching their spending, Kin’s continues to find a niche.
Lau said the goal is to make it easier for both Kin’s and COBS to draw customers who are seeking specialty stores as an alternative to shopping at big-box chains.
“It does make sense. They can get their fresh produce and their fresh baked goods in one stop,” he said.
The company continues to work with local farmers in Richmond and the Fraser Valley Leung and his parents met in the 1980s.
Lau said the hope is to open even more Kin’s locations across the region. He said they’re cautious and recognize that market conditions are tough.
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But in the long-term, “we want to be in every community.”
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