Imperial Food Market

Imperial Food Market, located at 65th and Imperial, is ethnic food market serving the immediate area. Imperial Ave. is a small commercial area which provides different types of services. For instance, on one side of the store there was a church and on the other an auto body repair shop. Across the street we saw an apartment complex and a trolley line running parallel to the street. Standing in front of the store you could hear the ringing bell crossing guard warning people of the coming trolley. The sounds of Mexican music from the cars in the parking lot which gave the area a diverse personality. The area also has many ethnic food restaurants further down in a mini shopping center. Right next to this is the Employment Development Department which serves the whole Encanto Community.

The Imperial Food Market is small establishment with a lot of customers. Most of the customers are there to pick up small items and others will come to pick their weekly groceries. An abundance of Mexican style foods, including a large variety of food/non-food items such as drinks and magazines. The merchandise attracts mostly older customers in their middle ages or seniors who find the store convenient. Many of the signs are bilingual (English-Spanish), hand written, and advertising WIC approval. The customers are from many ethnicities including, African-American, Anglo, Asian, Mexican-American. The store seems like it has been in the area for awhile due to the dusty aroma in the air. Exhaust from the older vehicles mixed with the air conditioning from the store created a interesting odor. In the friendly, casual, and familiar surroundings, you could hear customers and the store clerks greeting each other with a warm "hello".

Postscript: Seven Months Later

We have now learned that the majority of the population in that area is actually Filipino which wasn't evident in our first observation at the market. Also seen during our second observation were the unusually high numbers of people "milling" around. The increase in the number of pedestrians might be attributed to the timing of our second observation; students from the surrounding schools were released thirty minutes prior. One more change we noticed was the large number of police officers patroling the streets. We discovered after our first observation that there is a fairly new police sub-station in the area.