Tina Lee takes T&T into California. San Jose's first week beat every Loblaw opening.

Tina Lee opened T&T Supermarket's first California store in San Jose on June 18. T&T is Canada's largest Asian grocer. On Loblaw's second-quarter call, president and chief executive Per Bank said the first week posted the highest opening-week sales of any store in the company's history. Hundreds of people stood in line.

Loblaw is Canada's largest grocer. It has owned T&T since 2009. The operator Bank is talking about is still the founder's daughter, and she still runs the stores.

Her parents, Cindy and Jack Lee, opened the first two shops in Burnaby and Richmond, British Columbia, in 1993, when Tina was 13 and bagging groceries. Cindy, who was born in Taiwan, wanted one clean store with carts and bathrooms, so a Saturday did not mean hopping Chinatown markets.

They named it for Tina and her sister Tiffany. Their brother Jason did not get a letter. TT&J, Lee has said, did not have the same ring.

Lee left for school and a consulting job, then came home for the sale. She took an honours business degree from Ivey Business School at Western University in 2003 and an MBA from UCLA Anderson. She spent about six years in Los Angeles at Deloitte Consulting, the professional-services firm, on strategy work.

When Loblaw bought T&T in 2009 for C$225 million, C$191 million of it cash and the rest in preferred shares tied to later results, she returned as director of strategy and operations and sat in the room for the deal.

Loblaw has kept T&T as its own division. Lee has said the family stayed invested after the parent bought out the other two original backers. The check cleared. She still had a store to open.

Cindy retired in 2014. Lee became CEO on October 1, at 34. In a Globe and Mail interview last year she said her mother sent mixed signals about handing over the job, and that Loblaw executives insisted she take it. She has said she still does not feel ready. The stores kept opening anyway.

Under her watch T&T more than doubled its count. A May company release put the chain at more than 39 stores across Canada and the United States, with headquarters in Richmond, B.C., and offices in Toronto and Los Angeles. BCBusiness, the Vancouver magazine that named her a 2026 Women of the Year Entrepreneurial Leader, put the workforce around 9,000.

The first U.S. store opened in Bellevue, Washington, on December 5, 2024, at 76,000 square feet. Lynnwood followed. San Jose, about 55,000 square feet in a former Walmart at Westgate Center, is the third.

When T&T announced that California store, Lee said her aunt lives in nearby Saratoga and that she had spent summers there. The shop, she said, was for her.

Washington shoppers used to drive north for T&T. Lee noticed the plates in Vancouver lots and spent years planning the reverse trip. Bank said Loblaw plans two more California stores in 2026. A 72,600-square-foot store at NewPark Mall in Newark, the East Bay suburb, is slated for winter 2027.

Canada is still getting bigger boxes. T&T's largest Ontario store, 66,000 square feet at Empress Walk in North York, opens October 8. In September, Lee said the 14-year Unionville shop in Markham will move into 68,000 square feet at CF Markville, a Cadillac Fairview mall, in 2028.

The U.S. headlines are new. The same operator is still filling the suburbs that already know the banner.

For a household that runs a restaurant or an import shop, watch what happened after the lawyers left. Lee came back with a credential someone outside the family would audit, and enough years at another company to speak its language. Then she stayed to run the thing that had been sold.

Succession and Exit Planning for Immigrant-Owned Family Shops is the harder version when there is no Loblaw on the other side of the table. How to Build Generational Wealth as a Child of Immigrants still starts with surplus you can keep after the ribbon is cut.

Lee joined Loblaw's management board, the parent's operating-executive group, in December 2023. T&T's bestselling private-label items now also sit on Real Canadian Superstore shelves, the parent's big-box banner. Price family support against the cash that clears in the Family Support Budget Calculator.

If your parents ever sell the shop, the question that lasts is who shows up at 6 a.m.

This is educational reporting on a public-company grocery expansion, not investment, career, or succession advice. Store results and opening dates can change after a press release.