Special Report: Kasia Market - Belle Mead, NJ

Kasia Market

Opened: December 20, 2024

Owner: Dennis Ahn

Previous Tenants: none

Cooperative: none

Location: 2311 US-206, Belle Mead, NJ

Photographed: May 9, 2025

It's exciting to see grocers -- especially independent grocers -- push the boundaries of just what a supermarket can be. The most recent example of that that I've posted has been the DeCicco & Sons in Sleepy Hollow, NY, which adds a bar and restaurant, a catering hall, and even a history lesson to the usual supermarket lineup. Here in Belle Mead, New Jersey (about halfway between Princeton and Somerville), a supermarket entrepreneur is experimenting with a completely different set of features.

Kasia Market, a newly-built supermarket of just under 30,000 square feet, might focus on Asian foods. But it's no ordinary Asian supermarket. Dennis Ahn, who lives here in town, opened the store in December 2024 with a soft opening, showing a vision for a completely different kind of supermarket. You can read extensively about the store and his plans here, but let's take a look at it ourselves!

You enter to the grand aisle on the right side of the store. Produce is in the middle of the grand aisle, with a Korean cosmetics department at the front. There's a food court on the right side of the store, with sushi, hot food, and a few other stations like bubble tea. Dairy and meat line the back wall of the store, with halal meat and a service butcher in the back-left corner. Service seafood and frozen foods are on the left side of the store.

It's the only Asian supermarket in the immediate area, with the next closest in East Brunswick (by my searching, at least). That's the Asian Food Markets, a new and very nice store that's about 14 miles east, or a 35-minute drive with no traffic which, let's face it, never happens. And that's as the eastern and southern Asian populations of central Jersey grow rapidly. Montgomery -- the township where this store is located -- is over a third Asian-American, including Chinese, Korean, and Indian communities. There's an Indian supermarket to the north in Hillsborough, but no other Asian supermarkets in this area. There are other supermarkets, though, including a ShopRite about four miles south in Montgomery.

There's some serious attention to detail across the store, such as this mural between the food court and the restrooms in the front corner.

And at first glance, the selection looks a lot like other Asian supermarkets. But if you take a closer look, it's very different. As that article I linked above mentions, the goal here is local food and zero waste, so you'll find a lot of locally-grown produce. The owner of this store also owns a farm in town, and uses food waste as compost and aquaponics to grow vegetables. More on that soon.

In addition to that, there are multiple sections of produce designated specifically as local. There's a massive display of organic mushrooms, for instance, which are grown in Lawrenceville -- just about 10 miles from this store.

Check out those mushrooms! Beautiful!

There's also microgreens, also grown here in New Jersey. And the selection goes far beyond the usual micro-herbs...

Here's a look across the front-end of the store before we continue the tour.

"Beyond Fresh" is the slogan that Kasia is using for this store, and the signage outside says Kasia Market Asian Gourmet Foods. That's clearly the real story here -- this is a higher-end market than the usual Asian supermarkets we see. There's nothing wrong with them, but this store is definitely a specialty market first and an Asian supermarket second.

The store is pristine and modern in appearance, if not overly beautiful. I'm actually surprised, given how specialized much of the selection is, more effort wasn't put into the decor. But in person, it looks sleek and clean.

Since there's a ShopRite in town, there's not necessarily an imperative for Kasia to be the general supermarket, but there are some staples and some other specialty items, such as Bob's Red Mill grains and some very nice imported pastas from Italy. I spotted a few Seven Farms organic storebrand items (from the Federated Group in Illinois, I'm not sure who's supplying Kasia with them locally).

Zoom into the picture below and you'll see kosher cheeses hanging above Applegate organic lunch meats. If there's one issue I spotted with this store, it's exactly that -- it might be trying a little too hard to be everything to everyone. Sometimes stores that work too hard to be a fusion of lots of different types of supermarkets become the jack of all trades, master of none. So far, it seems the response to this store has been rather positive, so we'll see what happens long-term.

Frozen foods and meat/seafood are on the left side of the store.

There's a dedicated halal meat section just to the right of the butcher room, and a service butcher counter to the left. Seafood is on the side wall.

You can also see some examples of specialty meats in the cases here, such as the grass fed beef.

Frozen foods cases line the outside of the front-left corner of the store, with tables of shellfish on ice in front of that.

I would also say that this is distinctly an Asian-American market, in the same way that some H Marts are but in the way that, say, the Asian Food Markets I linked above aren't. It's definitely a bit removed from the stores in Flushing, for instance, that cater primarily to immigrants and maybe their children. Instead, it's clearly targeting an Asian-American customer who probably was born in the United States but has Korean (or Indian or Chinese) heritage. It's not a formula I see quite as much, but it seems to be done quite well here.

Baby items under the Ooh Baby sign in the front!

Incidentally, this store opened back in December of 2024, but has been in its soft-opening phase so far and has taken some time to fully open all of the specialty features here. The grand opening will be held on May 17.

And what's that beyond the registers on the front-end?

If you didn't spot it before, this is a hydroponic growing room for vegetables right inside the supermarket. Talk about local! Greens are grown here and are or will be sold in the store's produce department. It really doesn't get much fresher than that.

I will admit, I've been to a lot of supermarkets -- over 5000 at this point -- but this was my first Asian supermarket with a hydroponic grow room, a zero-waste operating philosophy, and a better selection of imported Italian pastas than a lot of big-chain supermarkets. Quite the experience, without a doubt, and I'm glad I got the chance to see it. Today, we're also checking out a brand-new LIDL, and tomorrow, we're off to Staten Island for a number of new stores!

• LIDL opens a new Central Jersey store
• An innovative Asian market prepares for its grand opening (this post)
• A new neighborhood supermarket opens on Staten Island as several others renovate and change banners in Rossville, Sunnyside, and Rosebank (Sunday)