Dining Latino: Latin American Supermarket offers wide variety of items

Latin American Supermarket offers customers a wide variety of items, including ingredients and kitchenware used to prepare many traditional Latin dishes.

Lupa Paño, brother of supermarket owner Justo Paño, spoke with LebTown about what he described as a “family business,” translated by Julie Viera from Spanish.

The supermarket at 429 N. 9th St., Lebanon, opened in 2009. “It’s gone really well, I mean, especially for a Latino business,” said Viera.

The supermarket offers a wide variety of products, which has helped to expand its largely Latino customer base. The United Family Restaurant, located next door, also sources some of its ingredients from the supermarket.

A walk through the supermarket’s aisles revealed fresh meat, dairy, and produce, frozen, refrigerated, and shelf-stable food items, and utensils, gadgets, and cookware used to prepare Latin and non-Latin dishes.

“A lot of people really like the sandwiches, and they’ll come for that,” said Viera. The supermarket prepares sandwiches for customers at the back counter.

Other offerings include candy, snacks, chilled beverages, individual frozen treats, over-the-counter medications, period products, baby food, diapers, wipes, pet and bird food, candles, paper, cleaning, and pest control supplies, other household items, cigarettes, and lottery tickets.

Six employees, who work different numbers of hours, keep the supermarket running. Looking toward the future, Paño told LebTown that the supermarket’s goal is to stay in business amid the growing competition of Latin grocers in Lebanon.

Latin American Supermarket is open Monday to Saturday from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. There are 30-minute parking spaces in front of the business.