Underground Grocers

I have to admit, I've been living in Gwangju for almost 6 months now, and have never made it to the Underground Grocers, a grocery store for the expats living here. I tried to go one time, but it was closed by the time we got there. I'd heard that due to business being good, they were moving locations to a more central part of downtown. This article was just featured in the Korean Times. I'm suprised at how long the owner has been living here!

Canadian Offers "Taste of Home"

"When Michael Simning realized he could not survive in Gwangju without real cheese, he decided to open his own foreign food mart.

“I just really wanted a steady supply of cheese,” said Simning, who now co-owns The Underground Grocers with fellow Canadian Tim Whitman, which provides expatriate and local customers in the city with Halal meat, sausages, tacos, and other items essential to their culinary survival.

The Underground Grocers started as a hole-in-the-wall outlet.

“We got too much attention, people wanted to just check things out and hang around,” said the 36-year-old. “The switch to the new location was a conscious move.”

The back-street location of the store has not hampered business, however.

“We survive on word of mouth. People come to us specifically, we don’t do advertising,” he said.

Simning is expanding his offerings in Gwangju with plans to open a British-style pub restaurant next to the shop.

It will be his second such venture. He became well known to expatriates in the city when he owned a popular expat hangout called Speakeasy.

Simning came to Korea from Canada in 1995, with no express intention of doing anything but kill time until the next leg of his travels in Asia.

“I didn’t expect to stay for longer than two weeks. I never made it to Thailand,” Simning said. He went home in 1999 and returned to live in Gwangju in 2003."


Now this article makes me want to go even more! Maybe this weekend...