LA Lucky

While Asian food continues to make a culinary impact in the U.S. consumer market, food retailers’ quest remains in discovering new flavors from the Asian continent. Fried rice, dim sum, and teriyaki chicken may be perennial favorites, but there’s a wide world of Asian cuisine waiting to be enjoyed.

This is exactly where LA Lucky comes into the picture. “As an Asian grocery wholesaler and food service distributor, our mission is to bring the best of Asian packaged food to the U.S. retail market,” says George Nguyen, president of LA lucky.

Nguyen and his wife Kim Thi Le Nguyen’s journey from an immigrant to a successful entrepreneur highlights the importance of hard work, determination, and a willingness to identify and address the gaps in the market. Through LA Lucky, Nguyen has been able to make a significant impact on the retail industry, providing much-needed support and resources to retailers selling Asian products across the U.S. Despite economic fluctuations since LA Lucky’s inception in 2007, including the recession of 2008-2009, both Nguyen and Kim Thi Le’s exceptional leadership navigated the company through constant change and challenges within the retail sector, increasing customer satisfaction, and generating revenue growth.

Currently, LA Lucky sources Asian products from trusted suppliers and manufacturers to ensure its imports meet the balance of quality and variety. Its team leverages a vigorous vetting process to select, import, and sell Asian food products to retailers. The process also involves inspecting food manufacturing facilities and ingredient quality according to U.S. food safety specifications. LA Lucky thoroughly checks a supplier’s food safety audit reports to evaluate if food manufacturers follow specific hygiene policies and practices.

Beyond this extensive scrutiny, LA Lucky believes end consumer feedback has the highest impact on product acceptance. The team conducts frequent sampling of new products at retail stores to collect and analyze customer feedback before initiating a product’s largescale distribution.

A champion of food equality, LA Lucky sources food products of diverse price ranges to support the culinary need of every consumer. From a business standpoint, it also adds a competitive advantage so retailers can significantly increase their sales possibilities.

LA Lucky currently distributes around 8,000 varieties of Asian products, ranging from fresh produce to canned, dry goods, including kitchen appliances, cosmetics, and medicines. It recently added frozen foods to the list to meet Gen Z’s need for ‘grab-and-go’ products. The products are packaged and distributed via LA Lucky’s in-house systems and transportation fleet. A seamless supply chain process starts when a purchase order (PO) is submitted by retailers. 24/7 transportation services ensure delivery of all products on time. In addition, LA Lucky has also introduced its dedicated shipping lanes to keep the distribution cycle constant and meet retailer needs in case of emergency or high demand.

In-house transportation has enabled it to expand distribution in hard-to-reach regions in the U.S. This also helps client retailers seamlessly expand their store network.

Based on a retailer’s quarterly sales reports, LA Lucky predicts the food products likely to be in demand and proactively procures them to avoid products going out of stock.

Keeping in mind the ongoing labor shortage in the retail market, LA Lucky palletizes its products according to their respective categories, so retailers can easily remove the external packaging and display it on the shelf in no time. Maximizing a retailer’s day-to-day productivity is another reason LA Lucky is a trusted name in the block.

Believing that a big part of every culture is its food, LA Lucky is enriching ethnic Asian food by importing and exporting various products and establishing a footprint in the U.S. market.