‘It was all worth it’: N.S. grocery store starts from scratch after fire

An Asian grocery store in Halifax is welcoming customers back after a fire destroyed the business last year.

Linh Nguyen has owned Tian Phat Asian Grocery in Halifax since 2021 and when a fire tore through the business last October, she and her husband Harold Knickle made a commitment to build it back from scratch.

“Everything in here was a total loss because of the smoke and the soot and the water,” says Knickle, who co-owns the store.

Hundreds of their Vietnamese products, many of which are hard to find in the city, were destroyed.

But Nguyen and her husband weren’t ready to call it quits on a business that means so much to them and the community. They decided to restore it one product at a time.

“Sometimes I thought, ‘Oh, maybe I’m not able to reopen the store because there’s so much things to do,’” says Nguyen. “I had to place orders to so many different suppliers…throwing things is easy, but bringing things back is not easy.”

As she doubted whether the business would make a comeback, her husband made a promise.

“Somehow my husband encouraged me so much. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll bring the store back for you.’”

Knickle kept true to that promise.

“I did all new cabinets throughout the store…I told my wife, I took down the store, I’ll bring up the store.”

They spent days and nights working on repairs. When they weren’t at the store, they were next door at their restaurant NHA Cafe.

“I have to dedicate my time to the restaurant more because we need to build a lot of new dishes to the restaurant menu. On top of that, I have to go back here, do the cleaning, rearranging things,” says Nguyen.

“My husband, after finishing the shift there, he comes here.”

When the grocery store reopened on Saturday, it wasn’t just customers who came flooding in, but a wave of community support.

“It’s been so happy for me to be back in this environment,” she says. “They always say the same thing like, ‘Oh, we are so happy you are back. We miss you so much.’ That warms my heart because I know I give them the best service.”

“In the end, it was all worth it,” says Knickle. “I’d do it again. I don’t want to, but I would do it again if I had to.”

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