T&T’s CEO follows in her mother’s founding footsteps to keep family grocery legacy intact
TORONTO — The last thing on Tina Lee’s mind while bagging groceries with younger sister Tiffany at their family’s first T&T Supermarket in the early ’90s was that she would be the one to take up the helm of the company her mother founded.
Though the sisters’ two “T” names were used to form the retailer’s name — one that didn’t include the initial of youngest sibling Jason, (“TT&J just didn’t have the same ring,” Lee said) — it was assumed their brother would be the one to follow in their Taiwanese-Canadian mother’s footsteps as chief executive.
Tina Lee is the CEO of grocery chain T&T, founded by her mother Cindy Lee.
“We thought, as a traditional Chinese family, that the boy would be the one to take on the business, but it turned out to be me,” said Lee, chief executive of the country’s largest Asian Canadian food chain since she took over for Cindy Lee in 2014.
Lee has been thinking a lot about her family’s legacy these days as she prepares for the birth of her third child, one whose name she said will likely start with the letter “T” in hopes of taking the company into the third generation under the watchful eye of another third-generation family-run company, Loblaw Cos. Ltd.
She chuckled recalling how she and her siblings pitched in when her mother opened the first T&T store in Burnaby, B.C., in 1993, when Lee was 13 and Jason was seven.
“His job was to fold cake boxes and he was so little, he’d be standing on a step stool so that he could fold them at the counter,” Lee said in an interview last week before being honoured as 2018 Executive of the Year by Ascend Canada, a North American non-profit organization for Pan-Asian business leaders.
But Lee believes her vantage point as the eldest child also gave her a deeper understanding of the obstacles her mother encountered at the time she embarked on her vision of opening an Asian food store designed like a North American-style supermarket, with multiple food departments and family-friendly amenities such as washrooms.
One of Lee’s potent early memories was overhearing her mother in tears speaking to her grandfather on the telephone because she didn’t know if the struggling business would survive.
“I’d never heard her upset before, and it upset me and I was crying too,” she said.
Cindy Lee’s father encouraged her to keep trying, seek out industry experts and surround herself with talent in order to make it through the tough times.
“That’s what I still do today,” Lee said of T&T, which celebrates its 25th year in business this year. “But, certainly, that moment of weakness that I witnessed of hers is what attached me to my mother and her ambitions and led me to want to help her through this career at the right time.”
After working through the early stumbles, T&T flourished in the Vancouver suburbs of Richmond and Coquitlam, with its growth fuelled by an influx of Asian immigrants.
By the time Loblaw bought the company in 2009 for $225 million, it had 17 stores in B.C., Alberta and Ontario and annual sales of $514 million. Today, it has 23 large stores across those three provinces.
The T&T grocery chain started in suburban Vancouver and now has 23 stories in three provinces.
T&T’s founding family has remained in charge to steer strategy and run the company, much like the way Dollarama Inc. was managed by the Rossy family after Bain Capital LP bought 80 per cent of the retailer in 2004.
“Loblaw recognized an evolving need for diverse ethnic food within the consumer set — the growth of the Asian population and (growth in the number of) non-Asians looking for Asian food,” said Michael Graydon, chief executive of Food & Consumer Products of Canada, an industry association.
He added the giant chain was wise to recognize the power of T&T within its own community rather than simply pursuing its own in-store Asian foods strategy.
At the same time, Loblaw helped T&T develop a line of private-label goods and began carrying a much broader range of T&T-sourced Asian products at its other grocery stores.
“Asians are one of the strongest (immigrant groups) that stay pretty true to its diet and its food wants and needs,” Graydon said. “Having access to the right product is very important and T&T was and is a trusted brand in the community.”
The Asian-Canadian population is expected to more than double by 2036 to an expected 8.7 million from 3.4 million in 2016. Spending by Asian households is expected to increase to $19.6 billion from $6.3 billion during the same period.
But beyond giving Asian families traditional grocery store amenities such as one-stop shopping and parking, T&T offered one of the earliest and most developed selection of ready-to-eat foods in grocery retail — an exploding category now known in the industry as the “home meal replacement” segment that competes with restaurants.
Cindy Lee opened the first T&T store in Burnaby, B.C., in 1993.
Its selection of ready-to-eat food now includes a sushi counter, barbecue counter, dim sum station and self-serve station with a variety of hot take-out dishes. The department was an early vision of Cindy Lee, who had some well-placed insights into the needs of working women who were also largely responsible for family meal planning and cooking.
“It’s smart to have women at the top of grocery companies, and we need to see more of it,” said Sylvain Charlebois, a food industry expert and dean of management at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
Traditional family roles may have evolved over the decades, but women still make the bulk of household grocery purchase decisions and female executives have been driving many of the changes to the old-fashioned grocery model.
“Most of the innovation coming out in the food industry is led by women, and the industry is desperate for innovation,” said Charlebois, who noted two fast-growing food-sector companies — Quebec-based Premiere Moisson bakery and meal kit business Miss Fresh— bought by the grocery chain Metro Inc. in recent years were founded and run by women.
Also working in T&T’s favour is that Asians are more loyal to ethnic food chains than the general population, according to Nielsen Canada data, with 54 per cent shopping in ethnic specialty stores for groceries, compared to 16 per cent of overall Canadian households.
Even better is that there is longevity in the trend. Asian families are more likely to continue shopping in ethnic stores cross-generationally: 50 per cent of the ethnic store channel’s consumers are first-generation Canadians, while 47 per cent are from the second or third generation.
Asians are more loyal to ethnic food chains than the general population, according to Nielsen Canada data.
Lee said the business views itself as a bridge for Asian immigrants.
“We want to match that growth and be there to influence not only flavours, but connections and to build a community as people acculturate to Canada,” said Lee, who added consumer brands are keen to connect with and market products to Chinese Canadians.
“We have enough foot traffic through our stores on a weekly basis that if you were to consider T&T as a media channel, we would be, as a grocer, the No. 1 media channel compared to every other Chinese media outlet out there today.”
Kelvin Tran, president of Ascend Canada, said the legacy cemented by Lee’s mother and furthered by Lee is more than just selling groceries.
“It’s about keeping the culture alive,” he said, noting he is a T&T shopper who brings his children along for grocery trips to introduce them to items he grew up eating. “It’s about continuing the culture that we bring to this country that we now call home. Food brings people together. With all families, the conversations happen around the kitchen table.”
A T&T Supermarket employee prepares freshly cooked stuffed buns at a store in Markam, Ont.
Family also played a crucial role when it came to the negotiating table with Loblaw.
Lee, then T&T’s director of strategy and operations, spent two years negotiating with Loblaw prior to the 2009 deal. She and her family, initially wary of the chain’s overtures, warmed to the idea of doing business with it because they got to know and respect the controlling Weston family.
“We share similar values and have the same appreciation for family businesses and how it enables you as an organization to take the long view of the business,” Lee said. “The way that they are able to make decisions and having more of a legacy to build, I thought, that’s what I want to do with my mother’s business as well.”
Like the Westons, Lee hopes the family business carries on to the next generation. To that end, her third baby was nicknamed “Baby T” in utero. “Maybe there will be a chance for this baby to carry on the T&T of our name.”
Ed note: Days after this interview was conducted, Tina Lee gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Taylin.
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