Lotte Plaza Market is coming back to Germantown. The Asian grocery chain is set to open at Fox Chapel Center, located at 19721 Frederick Road, taking over space currently occupied by GW Supermarket once that store's lease expires in April.
According to bizjournals.com, Lotte Plaza Market is set to open at the Germantown shopping center, replacing another international market once that market's long-term lease runs out in April. The timing lines up with the Fox Chapel Center space currently housing GW Supermarket, whose lease is expiring that same month. As The MoCo Show reports, the move marks a return for Lotte Plaza Market to the Germantown area, where the chain previously operated a store before closing it in 2022. That earlier Germantown location was replaced by New Grand Mart after Lotte Plaza Market shut it down.
A Chain Built From One Maryland Store
Lotte Plaza Market specializes in Asian groceries, a focus the company has carried since its earliest days. The chain got its start with a single store on Veirs Mill Road in 1989, according to The MoCo Show's reporting, and has since grown into a regional presence with locations spread across Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and Florida.
Exactly how many stores the company currently operates isn't entirely clear from available records. A tenant profile from oldetownerichmond.com describes the chain's growth from that one 1989 store to 12 locations, while a 2025 report from the Jax Daily Record put the Maryland-based company's footprint at 16 stores, comprising seven in Virginia, six in Maryland, two in Florida and one in New Jersey. The discrepancy may simply reflect different points in time, but neither figure has been reconciled against the other.
Eyeing 50 Locations by 2030
Whatever the current count, Lotte Plaza Market has made its expansion ambitions public. Per the company's own website, as cited by oldetownerichmond.com, the goal is to open 50 Lotte Plaza Market locations by 2030. The company has also said it has experienced double-digit growth every year for the last 12 years, according to a report from Richmond Magazine.
That growth has shown up well beyond the DMV. Last year, Lotte Plaza Market announced it would open a store on September 12 in a former Best Buy at 9355 Atlantic Blvd. in Jacksonville, Florida, the Jax Daily Record reported, describing a 45,799-square-foot supermarket with grocery, meat, seafood, produce and food-service sections. City records cited by the outlet show a renovation permit valued at $8.99 million was issued on November 15, 2024, followed by a sign permit on February 4, 2025.
The chain has also pushed into new Virginia markets. Richmond Magazine reported that Lotte Plaza Market opened a 45,000-square-foot Asian grocery store at 7801 W. Broad St. in Henrico, converted from a former Stein Mart location. That store marked the company's 16th outpost and its first in Virginia outside Northern Virginia, per the same report.
Back in Germantown, the specifics of the new store's opening date, exact square footage, and the current identity of the international market it's replacing haven't been independently confirmed beyond the shopping center's description. For now, local shoppers know the broad strokes: a familiar Asian grocery name is heading back to Fox Chapel Center once the current tenant's lease runs out next spring.
