Westgate's T&T Stops Being California's Only One on November 5

On the morning of June 18, the first person in line at 1600 Saratoga Avenue arrived at 4:25 a.m. By 8 a.m., an hour before the doors opened, SFGATE's reporter found hundreds of people waiting under a tent in the Westgate Center parking lot. A San Jose police captain estimated "easily over 500," and a colleague put the crowd at 1,000.

People came from that far away for one reason. Until this fall, West San Jose had the only T&T Supermarket in California. On November 5, the chain opens its second Bay Area store, on Geary Boulevard in San Francisco. The Westgate store is about to become one of four Bay Area T&Ts, and the regional pull it has had since June is about to be shared.

A Corner That Sat Empty for Five Years

The opening drew crowds partly because of what had been there before. T&T took over the former Walmart Neighborhood Market at Westgate. SFGATE reported in 2024 that the Walmart closed in 2019 and the space then sat vacant for five years.

The old box was almost too small for T&T. The Mercury News reported that T&T CEO Tina Lee liked the Westgate space but decided it wasn't big enough. Federal Realty, which owns Westgate, had to rework the deal. "We worked it out. We expanded the space," said Jeff Kreshek, an executive vice president at Federal Realty. The store sits at Saratoga Avenue and Prospect Road, on a corner most West San Jose drivers pass every week.

What the First Weeks Proved

The 4:25 a.m. arrival turned out to be typical of the opening. The San Francisco Chronicle later reported that the San Jose store drew 60,000 visitors on its opening weekend. On the parent company's second-quarter earnings call, Loblaw's CEO said the store had the highest first-week sales of any location in Loblaw's history, as Retail Insider reported on July 31.

That record measures the whole company. It says nothing about sales at the other Westgate tenants or total foot traffic at the center, and no local outlet has published those numbers. What it does show is how far people traveled. San Jose was T&T's third U.S. store and its first outside Washington State. Until November 5, anyone in California who wanted the store had to come to Saratoga Avenue.

The Counters People Line Up For

Opening coverage kept pointing to the same handful of prepared foods. Prices below were reported in June 2026 and may have changed since.

• Papa Chicken. A whole butterflied chicken, marinated for 24 hours, then battered and fried. It sold for $15 at opening. Lee's advice to SFGATE: "if you see the yellow box with the Papa Chicken, grab it."
• Fan tuan. Made-to-order Taiwanese rice rolls. The Chronicle says they have built a following at the San Jose store specifically.
• The hot buffet. Stir-fries, vegetables, noodles and rice, picked weekly from a rotating menu. It was $11.30 per pound at opening.
• Bakery. Portuguese egg tarts, mango cake and barbecue-pork steamed buns were all named in SFGATE's preview.
• The City Hall cake. A mango mousse cake made to look like San Jose City Hall's rotunda.

Produce is the department Lee talks about most. She told the Chronicle the chain sources 200 kinds of vegetables and 100 types of fruit. "Our best collection is in Asian greens," she said, naming gai lan and yam leaf sprouts. SFGATE's walk-through also found lychee, golden kiwifruit and durian, along with live seafood tanks.

Timing a Weeknight Run

When it opened, the store kept the same hours every day, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Those long hours make the end of the night the best time for a bargain. Lee told SFGATE that in the last hour or so before closing, items made daily with a short shelf life, such as sushi, get marked down. If you live within a few minutes of Saratoga and Prospect, the 9 p.m. hour is easy to reach and useful. If you drive across the Bay, it's hard to justify.

That gap helps explain why the November opening matters here. A store that has served the whole region since June is about to have three siblings.

The Bay Area Map After November 5

Here is how T&T's announced Bay Area stores line up as of early October 2026:

The San Francisco store will have things Westgate doesn't. The Chronicle reports it will be the first U.S. T&T with a café, serving black sesame and ube lattes, egg tarts and sit-down space for prepared foods. It will also sell its own city hall cake and carry the fan tuan that took off in San Jose. At 72,600 square feet, Newark will be T&T's largest California store, and Lee told the Chronicle it is well placed to serve the greater East Bay.

A T&T marketing manager told the Chronicle the chain picked its Bay Area sites for "strong surrounding neighborhoods, good parking and supportive city teams." Once there are stores in San Francisco, Newark and Millbrae, shoppers in each of those areas will have a closer option. West San Jose will still have its own, and its first months of foot traffic came during a window that closes in four weeks.

Saratoga Avenue's Next Traffic Question

T&T joined an established Asian grocery stretch along Saratoga Avenue. Before T&T opened, the Mercury News's April 2026 grocery guide described Mitsuwa at 675 Saratoga Ave. as a Japanese marketplace with seafood, meat, a bakery, sushi and a food court with three restaurants. A grocery run on Saratoga Avenue can now cover both stores without getting on a freeway.

Traffic is the open question. In a September 6 opinion piece for the Saratoga Falcon, student editor Elaine Che described opening-day crowds filling the Westgate lot. She wrote that the store's "crowded aisles, long food lines and busy surroundings foreshadow even more congestion on Prospect Road with the addition of a Costco." That is one writer's forecast, not a traffic study, but the Costco she mentions is real.

A September 2026 update from the Baker-West neighborhood association said the planned 165,000-square-foot Westgate West Costco was still in the building-permit process. It had no confirmed construction start or opening date, and construction was expected to take about 21 months once it begins. Even with an early start, that puts a Costco opening well past T&T's 2027 Bay Area openings.

The city is already asking residents about traffic on this stretch. San Jose has scheduled a transportation and circulation town hall for the Saratoga Avenue Urban Village Plan on Thursday, October 15, 2026, from 6 to 7 p.m. at Moreland Community Center. Anyone who has waited to turn into Westgate on a Saturday can bring that experience to the meeting.

If you live near Saratoga Avenue or are thinking about a home there, the changes at Westgate, El Paseo and the Costco site will shape that stretch for years. I follow those projects closely and am happy to talk through how they might affect a particular street or a home's value. Michal Amodai can start with a free home valuation for your address.