Dick Harwood, chief operating officer of Rancho Markets, sees increasingly diverse shoppers at his stores created for Latinos: immigrants from Asia, Africa, the Pacific and the Middle East.
So he’s not surprised that new census data shows that while Utah’s Latino population is still booming, other minorities are growing even faster. Harwood notes that just half his customers now are Latino. A fifth are white. But 30% come from the other fast-growing minorities.
“Our produce department draws a lot of the Asians and Pacific people to our stores because we have what they eat at home,” Harwood says, adding that his stores seek special foods from immigrants’ homelands if enough people request it.