For the uninitiated, T&T is a big deal. It's the largest Asian supermarket chain in Canada, known for its sprawling prepared food sections, live seafood counters, and aisles packed with imports you won't find at your average Safeway. The San Jose location adds another serious option to the South Bay's already impressive — if sometimes inconveniently timed — Asian food and grocery landscape.

And that timing issue is worth talking about. The Bay Area has a well-documented problem with early closures. As one local put it bluntly: "The whole Bay Area is early to bed. I've lived a lot of places, even in smaller towns, and I've never seen anything like it. It's baffling." Another resident who relocated from New York called the region's nightlife hours "just depressing."

They're not wrong. When your labor costs are among the highest in the nation, minimum wages keep climbing, and foot traffic doesn't justify the overhead of staying open late, businesses make the rational call and close early. This isn't a mystery — it's basic math. The regulatory and cost environment in California makes every extra hour of operation a calculation, not a given.

That said, T&T's arrival is a net positive. Private investment in brick-and-mortar retail is something to celebrate, not take for granted, especially when so many storefronts sit empty across the Bay Area. A major chain betting on San Jose with a new location signals confidence in the market — or at least confidence that the South Bay's massive Asian American population will show up in force.

They almost certainly will. The question, as always in the Bay Area, is whether the local business environment will let places like T&T thrive long-term — or nickel-and-dime them into the same early-closing, margin-squeezing trap that defines so much of the region's commercial life.

Welcome to San Jose, T&T. We hope the permit fees aren't too brutal.