| Seafood City Supermarket | |
| Type: | Private |
| Founded: | in National City, California, U.S. |
| Location: | Pomona, California |
| Area Served: | California Nevada Washington Hawaii Illinois Texas Ontario Manitoba Alberta |
| Locations: | 36 (as of 2023) |
| Industry: | Retail, Supermarkets, Grocery, Food court |
| Products: | Filipino products |
| Homepage: | http://www.seafoodcity.com/ |
Seafood City is an American supermarket chain that specializes in Filipino food and products. It was founded in National City, California as Manila Seafood and is headquartered in Pomona, California.[1] It has American locations in California, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, Texas, and Washington, and Canadian locations in Ontario, Alberta, and Manitoba.
The chain offers a wide selection of imported Asian goods as well as American staples. As its name suggests, Seafood City provides fresh seafood, as well as meat and produce. In some of its locations, it acts as a marketplace and serves as an anchor to Filipino businesses such as Chowking, Red Ribbon, Jollibee, and Tokyo Tokyo. In other locations, Seafood City also features locally owned Filipino video rental stores, immigration offices, travel agencies, and restaurants.
Seafood City opened its first store in National City, California in 1989.[2] It has since expanded to 21 stores in California,[3] [4] [5] with a concentration in the Greater Los Angeles Area, San Diego County, and Northern California. Further expansion has led the company to open markets in the Las Vegas, Nevada area,[6] Seattle (Tukwila, Washington),[7] Chicago, Illinois,[8] [9] and Waipahu, Hawaii.[10]
Seafood City has expanded into Canada by opening its first location in Mississauga, Ontario in the Heartland Town Centre shopping district in the fall of 2017.[11] Additional stores followed in Winnipeg in 2019, Edmonton and Calgary in 2020, and Scarborough, Ontario in 2021.[12]
Seafood City opened its first store in Texas in the city of Sugar Land, near Houston in December 2023.[13] [14] There are plans to expand to Chandler, Arizona in 2025,[15] Florida and Virginia.
In December 2022, the retail part of the store at 8020 Olive Boulevard, University City was never cleared after being shut down for health code violations, and all contents of the store decomposed without human intervention for months, leaving a smell of rotten seafood for the neighborhoods surrounding the supermarket, and having levels of fruit flies breaching in homes, 20 per day in one resident’s.[16] The seafood counters were already closed, as it had been shut down for health violations earlier, but the freezer’s contents and the packaged goods were left to decompose. Bio-One, a biohazard company, was ordered to clean it, while the owner of the property faces multiple lawsuits.[17] The incident caused an official of University City to comment on the situation.[18] [19] [20]