A ‘compact Chinatown’

“We don’t just sell merchandise here, we sell the knowledge behind it,” said Harold Park, who with his wife, Catherine, has owned House of Rice for nearly 40 years. A downtown staple, the Asian imports store has occupied its current Broadway location since 1982.

“If people come in with health problems, I can recommend certain Chinese herbs,” he continued. “If people want a Buddha, I can tell them the stories of all the different Buddhas from all the different countries. If someone wants to cook a dish, my wife can tell them the right ingredients, the right utensils and the best way to cook it.”

Park explained this is the reason he and his wife, at the ages of 72 and 71, are the store’s sole employees, working eight to 10 hours a day, six days a week: “We tried having employees, but not for the last 25 years, because they didn’t have the knowledge. Without the knowledge, you have no trust.”

Trust, Park said, is essential to the business’ longevity. “People trust us and tell their friends and family. We are now serving our third generation of customers, because the grandmas bring the moms, and the moms bring the kids.”

House of Rice began as an Asian foods market located on The Esplanade in 1974. Though it did well with Butte County’s ethnic population, the Parks, who are Korean by heritage, realized they needed broader appeal to succeed: “We couldn’t survive serving 3 percent; we needed to attract 90 percent of the population.”

Park said he spent three days in San Francisco’s Chinatown, watching and making lists of what “Americans” bought. He listed pages of items, and one of the shopkeepers kindly gave him a list of distributors and advised him how to deal with them. The Parks opened a revamped store in The Almond Orchard Shopping Center, the success of which prompted them to move downtown around 1980.

House of Rice’s range of merchandise—as well as the Parks’ knowledge—is vast and ever-expanding: “If two people ask for a certain item we don’t have, I find it somehow,” Park said. “Now I have almost everything Asian import. Even in Chinatown you have to go to 10 stores to find the items we have right here in one place. This store is like a compact Chinatown.”