Historic low-cost Sunrise Market grocery store in Vancouver listed for sale

Before and after: The rise and fall of Vancouver's original vibrant city centre in the Downtown Eastside

City of Vancouver to explore new density and uses to revive Railtown district, after public safety and business viability pleas from Aritzia, Herschel, and other employers

Opinion: Refusing change is a choice, and it's keeping the Downtown Eastside in crisis

Opinion: Stop clinging to the past, Vancouver’s Chinatown is dead and needs revival

Policies enabling taller buildings up to 32 storeys in the Downtown Eastside to generate new social housing and rental housing approved by Vancouver City Council

Future of London Drugs at Woodward's uncertain due to crime

Iconic Pink Pearl Chinese Restaurant eyed for affordable housing redevelopment

According to a new listing by Sotheby’s International Realty, the business — not the property — is on the market with an asking price of $4.5 million.

Based on BC Assessment’s July 2024 roll, the property is worth $3.973 million, with $2.128 million coming from the value of the 9,539 sq. ft. plot of land and $1.845 million coming from the value of the 1964-built, 7,300 sq. ft. retail building with a rooftop vehicle parking lot.

The listing describes the property in the following way: “This trusted neighbourhood staple offers an extensive loyal customer base, consistent year-round sales, and strong reputation for brand and service. Prime high-traffic location with excellent visibility and parking. The sale includes all equipment, fixtures, and transport, with smooth transition support available for new ownership. Ideal for an owner-operator or investor seeking a turnkey operation with proven results. Rare chance to own a cornerstone business with deep community roots and continue on a legacy.”

Sunrise Market has long been valued for its selection of affordable produce, meat, and everyday groceries — often cited by shoppers as among the most budget-friendly options in a city where food prices and overall living costs continue to climb. Its location near Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside makes it a key access point for fresh food for residents in low-income and underserved communities.

The original location, which opened in the 1950s, was situated just half a block away — before the store relocated to its current corner location in 1961. The store holds deep cultural significance as a pioneering success in Chinese Canadian business history: it was the longtime retail home of Sunrise Soya Foods, where blocks of tofu from the now-nationwide brand were produced in the back of the market decades ago.

In 1983, due to its rapid growth, Sunrise Soya Foods relocated its tofu-making operations from the grocery store building to its first-ever industrial-sized facility nearby. The grocery store continued operating, thriving alongside the nearby Chinatown during the historic district’s heyday between the 1960s and 1990s, especially after the federal government changed its immigration policies in 1967.

During that decades-long heyday period, the sidewalks in Chinatown and outside Sunrise Market were regularly as densely crowded with shoppers as Robson Street is today during the holiday shopping season — a level of activity that no longer exists to say the least.

In more recent decades, the area now known as the Downtown Eastside has experienced significant distress. When Sunrise Market opened at its current location in the early 1960s, this area was nearing the end of its period as Vancouver’s original vibrant and thriving Central Business District. As commercial activity gradually shifted westward across the downtown Vancouver peninsula, the Downtown Eastside increasingly became home to higher concentrations of homelessness, low-income residents, and people facing mental health and substance abuse challenges.

Chinatown, located just south of the store, began to lose its critical mass of Chinese shoppers as many turned to new Asian malls in suburban areas and the emergence of the T&T Supermarket chain across the region during the 1990s and 2000s. At the same time, Chinatown and surrounding areas increasingly felt the spillover effects of the growing concentration of poverty, crime, and public disorder associated with the Downtown Eastside, while the once-loyal base of Chinese shoppers aged and diminished in number — an issue also affecting many other longtime restaurants, shops, and other businesses in Chinatown.

The area’s social issues are also highly visible at Sunrise Market’s storefront. Prior to the pandemic, the grocery store regularly displayed produce on the public sidewalk, a common practice among traditional independent Chinese grocery stores. Since the pandemic, that operational practice on both the Powell Street and Gore Avenue sidewalks has been largely curtailed, and some of the display areas inside behind the metal barriers have also been reduced.

Over the past week, social media chatter of the business being listed for sale prompted swift reaction online and among the area’s poverty advocates, with some warning that the closure of Sunrise Market — if it were to occur after a change in ownership — could leave the neighbourhood without one of its last independent affordable food stores. Some activists are even calling for a government acquisition to create a “publicly-owned food market,” akin to publicly-operated community centre, schools, and hospitals.

As the business was recently listed, no prospective buyers have been publicly identified, and it remains unclear whether the store would continue operating as a grocery under new ownership.

However, sources tell Daily Hive Urbanized it is not that simple. While a prospective buyer could purchase the business and perhaps the property as well, they would not necessarily have the same close, long-standing relationships with the store’s many suppliers — decades-old personal connections and trust that have been key to the family-run business’s ability to keep prices low.

Moreover, Sunrise Market has a lesser-known line of business: as part of its overall complicated business model, it is also a major produce and grocery supplier to many restaurants across Metro Vancouver, a role that helps subsidize the in-store cost of produce and other grocery items for regular walk-in customers.

You might also like:
• Before and after: The rise and fall of Vancouver's original vibrant city centre in the Downtown Eastside
• City of Vancouver to explore new density and uses to revive Railtown district, after public safety and business viability pleas from Aritzia, Herschel, and other employers
• Opinion: Refusing change is a choice, and it's keeping the Downtown Eastside in crisis
• Opinion: Stop clinging to the past, Vancouver’s Chinatown is dead and needs revival
• Policies enabling taller buildings up to 32 storeys in the Downtown Eastside to generate new social housing and rental housing approved by Vancouver City Council
• Future of London Drugs at Woodward's uncertain due to crime
• Iconic Pink Pearl Chinese Restaurant eyed for affordable housing redevelopment