International Market Boxes: UK Supermarket

In honor of World Refugee Day on June 20th, we had the pleasure of working with the Erie Downtown Partnership and Erie Arts & Culture to visit some of the international markets found in Erie County. Each market is owned by an Erie County resident who is a New American or refugee. Every two weeks we've visited a new market and worked with the owner to curate a gift box full of products from their featured country/ies.

To kick off this series, we're highlighting the first box of the bunch, from UK Supermarket. Located at 1105 Parade Street, this market is Bhutanese/Nepalese and owned by Pradip Upreti. Pradip and his family opened this market in 2013 after they saw a demand for Indian, Nepalese, Bhutanese, and South Asian food and ingredients among their neighbors and Erie's growing immigrant populations. Pradip was born in Bhutan but spent 20 years in a refugee camp in Nepal before relocating to Erie in 2009.

He says his family is extremely grateful to their customers, not only for their business, but for helping them to understand what foods to stock and how to best serve the community.

This market has fresh produce, frozen foods, bulk staples, non-perishable goods, snacks, and drinks, as well as customer loyalty programs. Pradip's favorites at the market are the Kaju Barfi, which are frozen Indian sweets made from cashew nuts, sugar, flour, and thickening milk.

The items featured in this box included Parle Kreams pineapple cookies and cardamom cookies, Seasoning Mix, Paan Bites, Instant Tea Mix, Frooti Mango Drink, Chhurpi cheese candy, Coconut Chutney, Gulab Jamin Mix, Jalapeno Chakri, and Sweet & Salty Swad.

To order our next box, preorder through our website at www.gonelocalerie.com/market by this Sunday at 11:59pm.