The stores flourish wherever new migrant communities spring up. They can be the rare place where immigrants feel as though they are part of a majority.
While the first ethnic grocery stores food retailers catering to a migrant or diasporic culture in the U.S. opened up during the 19th and early 20th centuries in urban minority neighborhoods in major cities, today, such grocery stores have mushroomed around the country, wherever new migrant communities have sprung up.