Jagalchi

With no proper downtown in Daly City, Serramonte Center serves as a central gathering place for the community. After the departure of JCPenney, one of the mall’s key anchors sat vacant for years—until international Korean grocery chain Mega Mart seized the opportunity to create the largest Korean food experience in the United States. The transformed space, Jagalchi, is a brand-new concept for the grocer that makes Korean culture and cuisine accessible for all. 

Named after South Korea’s oldest and liveliest seafood market, Jagalchi provides a similar scale and energy centered on a ‘Food is Medicine’ concept. Simple, approachable branding unifies the interiors and guides visitors with a mark symbolizing the three core offerings: fresh seafood, vegan temple food, and rice flour baked goods. At the heart of Jagalchi, a restaurant helmed by one of Korea’s first Michelin-star chefs brings the concept to life through family recipes that incorporate ancient food wisdom into modern dishes. Here, a modern take on ‘pyung-sang,’ traditional low-platform seating, exemplifies the goal of making Korean culture accessible by ensuring all customers can participate in the experience at eye-level. 

Throughout Jagalchi, classic Korean interior design is modernized through unexpected applications of classic building materials that allude to ancient food wisdom while avoiding stereotypical references. As an extension of the design concept, natural, hand-crafted materials minimize VOCs, and new skylights bring in natural light while reducing operational energy use. An estimated 550 tons of CO2 were prevented from entering the atmosphere through reuse of the existing shell building.  

Jagalchi is a dynamic use case for the growing inventory of big box vacancies, breathing new life into the mall and creating more than 200 jobs for Daly City. Multi-sensory and inclusive, it satisfies a growing desire for specialty, experience-driven destinations in an evolving retail landscape.