Jimmy Jeong

Luck Be A Lady | Hong Nguyen manages her family business, Lucky 97.

Lucky 97
10725-97 St, 780-424-8011

Located on the northern tip of Chinatown, Lucky 97 supermarket has provided Edmontonians with a bountiful mix of Asian and western groceries since 1994. That’s the year that owner Ba Nguyen bought the building (which at the time was a Safeway) and moved in all of the stock from his existing Asian market. To help fill the rest of the 14,000-square-foot space, he decided to expand the store’s selection, and started carrying western grocery products as well.

According to Hong Nguyen, one of Lucky 97’s general managers (and daughter to Ba), that combination is a big part of what makes the store successful.

“In Chinatown, there were a few small grocery stores [before Lucky 97 opened], but nothing that had both Asian and western products,” she says. “We have unique product lines that you can’t find in other western grocery stores. We do importing as well, from all over Asia: Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines.”

Hong started working at Lucky 97 as a teenager in high school, moving swiftly up the ranks from cashier to customer service to supervisor. Five years into her current position, she now co-manages the store along with her brother Sang.

Lucky 97 is intended to be a one-stop grocery store, and it does indeed have many of the key bases covered: produce, deli, seafood, frozen foods, a bakery, and Chinaware — it even has an in-store fried chicken restaurant called Chester Fried. On a rather hectic Saturday afternoon, the store itself looked surprisingly well-stocked and orderly, which is all the more impressive considering upwards of 20 customers swarmed the meat counter — which, Nguyen points out, also offers in-store butchering — with ripped take-a-number tickets in their hands. At the front, a total of nine tills were active, including a makeshift counter at the customer service desk. Business, it seems, is good.

Rather than split up according to nationality, the Asian and western items at Lucky 97 are for the most part integrated. Its Asian products are imported on a weekly basis, mostly from nations in the southeast, while the western fare arrives chiefly through Lucky’s partnership with Macdonalds Consolidated’s Family Foods division. In a coincidental nod to the building’s prior tenants, many of the store’s western products bear the Safeway logo.

Nguyen says that while you can buy all of your ingredients from scratch at Lucky 97, the store is also geared towards providing full meals that are easy to make as well as delicious.

“Right now we have basa fish that are pre-marinated,” she says, citing an example. “We sell them in clay pots, all for less than five dollars. For convenience, [customers] put the clay pot on the stove, they boil [the fish], and it’s ready to eat.”

Then again, if you’re like me, and judge all stores based solely on how many off-the-beaten-path snacks you can find, Lucky 97 will not disappoint either. Just some of the items I feel compelled to return for include Bird’s Nest White Fungus drink, bamboo shoot tips soaked in brine, whole cooked bananas with skin intact (10 for $2.45!), soybean soda, and a six-pack of jackfruit pudding.

But Edmontonians aren’t the only ones who can enjoy what the Nguyens and Lucky 97 have to offer. A second supermarket opened in Calgary a few years ago, and a third is set for Winnipeg in January 2010. At this rate, it won’t be long until all of Canada falls under the spell of the ready-to-cook basa fish.