The first people in line at 20558 Stevens Creek Boulevard on Friday, October 9, showed up at 7:30 a.m. The doors opened at 10. By the end of the day, SFGATE reported that about 1,700 customers had come through Hashi Market, the line had filled the whole parking lot, and cashiers were ringing up 300 transactions an hour for most of the morning. One group in that line was a set of San Jose co-workers who had taken an early lunch to come see the store.
That lunch break explains more about this stretch of Stevens Creek than the size of the crowd does. The Sprouts Farmers Market space had been empty since 2023, according to the City of Cupertino's September 30 newsletter. It is one of several long-vacant storefronts on the corridor getting new tenants this fall. The businesses moving in share a schedule as much as an address. They are built around the weekday: the lunch hour, the office order, the trip home after work.
A grocery store built around the lunch line
Hashi Market fills about 20,000 square feet of the old Sprouts box. It specializes in imported Japanese products: snacks, produce, seafood, meat and sake, plus a large selection from Hokkaido that includes beef, rice, cheesecake, chocolate, and melons priced at $59. Palo Alto Online's first look also lists frozen mochi ice cream and taiyaki, flavored soymilk, a bakery, a beauty aisle stocked with Canmake Tokyo, and a kitchen-goods aisle with pans and plates. It also carries some Chinese, Korean and American brands.
SFGATE described three large kiosks selling freshly made chicken katsu bentos, curry bowls, salmon teriyaki, and $26 A5 wagyu rice bowls. It called the section a boon for nearby tech workers and for students at De Anza College down the road. A full wall on the far right of the store holds sushi rolls and boxes of nigiri.
The hours stretch the day at both ends. KRON4 lists the Cupertino store as open daily from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Head of operations Ava Liu told SFGATE that all sushi will soon be 30% off after 8 p.m., a practice the company says has worked in its New York stores. As of opening week, that discount was described as coming soon, not as a current policy. If it starts, the evening sushi wall becomes a late-dinner option at an hour when much of the corridor's dining has wound down.
Why a New York grocer picked this address
Hashi Market was founded in New York in 2024 and has six stores in New York City. Cupertino is its first West Coast location. The company told SFGATE it chose Cupertino for a short list of reasons.
"This is our flagship store in California, so we really put a lot of passion and energy and effort into this location." The city was chosen because "it's a central place for California. Apple is here. Everyone knows it."
Ava Liu, head of operations, as quoted by SFGATE
That reasoning names the workforce, not the weekend crowd. It also points to how quickly the company plans to grow. Operations director Justin Li told SFGATE, "Entrepreneurs, we like to go fast," and said the company saw a gap in the U.S. market for Japanese goods. Li told Palo Alto Online that the name means "bridge," for bringing Japanese culture to the U.S.
Hashi already has a Bay Area footprint beyond Cupertino. It owns Marina Food Market in San Mateo and Marina Grocery in Milpitas and Union City, and it is deciding whether to convert those stores to the Hashi brand. Li said no timeline has been set. SFGATE reported that the Milpitas store has already shifted some of its advertising and branding to the Hashi name and added signs for Fujiissa, the matcha and soft-serve kiosk popular in the New York stores. The Crossroads Center store in Cupertino is the one the company calls its California flagship.
The same pattern a few blocks either way
The September 30 city newsletter covered Hashi alongside several other storefronts on the same road. Laid out together, they show how long some of these spaces sat empty and what has replaced them.
| Address on Stevens Creek Blvd. | Previous tenant | Status before | New tenant | Hours or status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20558 | Sprouts Farmers Market | Vacant since 2023 | Hashi Market | Opened October 9, daily 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. |
| 20803 | The Vitamin Shoppe | Vacant since 2019 | Preferred Bank, Silicon Valley Regional Office | Open weekdays, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. |
| 20488 | Le Boulanger | Former bakery space | Specialty's Café & Bakery | Tenant-improvement plans submitted, no opening date |
| 19628, Marketplace | Not stated | Not stated | Jingege & YaoYao | Opened late August, daily 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. |
The Preferred Bank space is 3,280 square feet and had been empty for about seven years before the regional office opened. Its hours are strictly weekday banking hours. Jingege & YaoYao, a Chinese restaurant, took 4,370 square feet at Marketplace and serves lunch through dinner every day. Specialty's is the largest of the planned arrivals, at about 6,550 square feet.
Specialty's is coming back to a corridor that fits its model
Specialty's has a longer Bay Area history than anything else on the list. The chain started in San Francisco in 1987 and grew to more than 50 locations across California, Washington and Illinois. In May 2020, the company said the pandemic and shelter-in-place orders had wiped out its revenue, and every location stopped operating on May 19 of that year. The Mercury News reported in March 2021 that founders Dawn and Craig Saxton had bought the company back out of Chapter 7 bankruptcy and reopened one former cafe at 645 Ellis Street in Mountain View. At the time, they said any further locations would depend on customer demand.
That report is more than five years old, and it is not a current count of Specialty's locations. What the Specialty's website shows today is workplace catering and online ordering, with sandwiches, salads, soups, breakfast, cookies and drinks. A business that sells mainly to offices placing orders has an obvious reason to want a large space on a corridor this close to Cupertino's biggest employers. The city has not given an opening date, so the old Le Boulanger storefront at 20488 will stay quiet a while longer.
How Hashi fits a crowded year for supermarket openings
Hashi Market is opening into a busy regional market. SFGATE counted it as part of a 2026 wave of Asian supermarkets: T&T Supermarket opened in San Jose in June, Tokyo Central in Emeryville drew about 8,000 people in February, and H Mart's Dublin store welcomed 10,000 shoppers in March. Palo Alto Online added Mega Mart in East Palo Alto, Osaka Marketplace in Foster City and Fugetsu in Santa Clara.
Compared with those openings, Cupertino's crowd of about 1,700 was smaller than the Dublin or Emeryville totals. Hashi is also making a different pitch. It leans on Hokkaido products that Li says other Japanese markets don't usually carry, and on a hot-food counter that serves a weekday lunch. A shopper choosing between T&T in San Jose and Hashi in Cupertino is choosing between a big weekly shop and a quick lunch stop, so the two stores are not direct substitutes.
Planning a visit this month
On opening day, the line formed two and a half hours before the doors opened. Regular hours now start at 8 a.m., two hours earlier than the grand-opening start. Two weekends this month will also bring extra traffic to Stevens Creek. The city's Diwali Festival runs Saturday, October 17, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Memorial Park, 21121 Stevens Creek Boulevard. Main Street Cupertino's Pumpkin Palooza fills Town Square at 19459 Stevens Creek Boulevard on Saturday, October 24, from 2 to 5 p.m., with a puppet show, music and a canine costume contest.
When long-empty storefronts fill with new tenants, the change shows up in daily routines and in how buyers see the blocks around them. If you own a home near the Stevens Creek corridor and want to know how changes like these figure into your property's value, The Balakrishnan Group can walk you through it. Request a Confidential Consultation, and we'll go over what the new tenants on your stretch of the road mean for your home.
