Senior Vice President, Western Region President and Chief Operating Officer, Federal Realty Investment Trust
How Federal Realty brought T&T to San Jose - an interview with Tina Lee & Jeff Kreshek
Tina Lee, CEO of T&T Supermarkets, and Jeff Kreshek, Western Region President of Federal Realty sit down and discuss T&T opening their first Californian store in the Bay Area, San Jose.
Special thanks to James Chung, at the econic company, Laura Barr and Graham Grealish, at CBRE for bringing Westgate Center and T&T together.
About Jeffrey Kreshek
Jeffrey Kreshek, Senior Vice President, Western Region President and Chief Operating Officer at Federal Realty Investment, discussed the company's partnership with T&T Supermarkets to open the chain's first California store at Westgate Center in San Jose. In a February 2025 interview with T&T CEO Tina Lee, Kreshek described visiting multiple T&T locations and characterized the experience as "the most amazing spectacle I've ever seen," citing the fanfare, customer lines, and in-store elements such as live seafood. He stated that Federal Realty applies the same "discipline and thought process" to Westgate Center as it does to its Santana Row project, aiming to create "a relationship that's deeper than just commerce." Kreshek said the company focuses on "immers[ing] ourselves in the communities we build, figure out what's missing in those communities and partner with the right brands to offer the public something they've never seen before." He noted that California is "notoriously difficult to operate in" but expressed confidence in T&T's success. Kreshek credited the partnership to Federal Realty's due diligence and said he felt "honored to be able to partner with TNT."
Transcript (35 segments)
T
Tina0:00
Hi, I'm Tina. I'm from TNT and I am sitting here today with Jeff Kreshek. I've got some questions for him and I've got some questions for you, and he's got some questions for me. So my first question is here: what was your experience like visiting TNT for the first time?
J
Jeffrey Kreshek0:18
Well, let's be fair. First of all, I didn't visit a TNT store. I visited like 11 TNT stores. If you remember, it was a day whirlwind where we saw first generation all the way to the most recent opening. And it's hard to describe unless you actually can physically be there. It was the most amazing spectacle I've ever seen. I've been to a lot of openings of a lot of stores. This was unlike anything I've ever seen. From the fanfare, from the lines—I couldn't get over people lined up, hundreds of people lined up for an opening of a supermarket. And then when you go in there, just the experience, the sounds, the smells, the visual, the live seafood—it is unlike anything I've ever seen. It was a real wow moment for us because while we knew—and I don't know if you remember the story—is we sort of invited ourselves to the grand opening.
T
Tina1:14
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
J
Jeffrey Kreshek1:16
We talked to the broker and said, 'Hey, can we—do you think it'd be okay if we crash the party?' And he said, 'Sure.' So we bought a ticket, we flew up there, and we sort of stormed the castle, so to speak.
T
Tina1:26
That's right.
J
Jeffrey Kreshek1:28
And we had no idea what to expect. And what we saw was—it was one of those moments that you don't get very often in a career where you come back and you can say to your team, 'This is something special. This is something unique. This is something totally different. This is something we need to be paying attention to.' To hear your perspective from the outside in, like you have a lot of grocery anchors.
T
Tina1:47
Yes. Jeff, that brings me to my next question because, you know, nobody knows what TNT is. They're going to know soon enough. They don't know. So can you please tell Americans what makes TNT unique compared to other grocery anchor tenants you have in your properties?
J
Jeffrey Kreshek2:07
It's everything. It's the ethos of how you do everything. It's the customer service. It's the sights, the sounds, the smells, as I said earlier. It's the fact that somebody like myself who may not be ethnically tied to a grocery store—it's not your heritage, it's not my heritage—you want to really try new things. You want to explore, which is not what you typically get in most retailers or grocery stores. It tends to be more about the function as opposed to the experience of shopping. You were all about the experience of shopping, and it's really something special.
T
Tina2:41
That's a really interesting point because I feel nervous. This is a new venture for us coming from Richmond, BC. And when I'm doing site selection, I really try to look for the Asian pockets. But you're bringing up a different point, which is you go to the experience and you don't think it's one that's just meant for Asians.
J
Jeffrey Kreshek3:00
No, no, no. And that's a really, really important point because so many of the ethnic groceries of yesteryear were, if you're that ethnicity, you go to that market. And what you're starting to see with shopping—and I just look at it from the perspective of my own family—there's not one grocery store for one thing. You're comfortable going to ethnic grocery stores. I think the American consumer also is so much more ethnically diverse in how they eat. Sushi night is something that you can bring into your house very easily where you never would have done that. So you want to go to someplace that's authentic. You want to get the authentic ingredients, and you feel comfortable doing that. And you deliver that experience better than anybody I've ever seen.
T
Tina3:41
California is notoriously known to be a difficult state to operate in. Do you have confidence for TNT in California?
J
Jeffrey Kreshek3:45
100%. Tina, I'm going to speak to you. This is something we believe in. Federal Realty believes in. I believe in. I have no doubt you're going to be successful. Zero.
T
Tina3:58
I'm so happy and actually relieved to hear that from Jeff Kreshek. That takes me to my next question. Share with us the Federal way about making properties come to life. This guy is a placemaker of placemakers.
J
Jeffrey Kreshek4:11
I can't thank you enough for the compliments, but really, it's a total team effort at Federal. I mean, there's a lot of people that touch these properties and a lot of great thinking and a lot of great ideas that come out of our group. But really, what we focus on is trying to immerse ourselves in the communities we build in, trying to figure out what's missing in those communities and how do we develop that. So Westgate's a really great example. I mean, it's a very dominant power center, but how do we upgrade what we do there through our tenancy? It's hard to really make that an exciting place by putting in better landscaping or what have you. What we really do try to focus on is how do we partner with the right brands to offer the public something they've never seen before, something that's better than what they would get at just their old neighborhood shopping center. And that's why Westgate is such an unbelievable opportunity. We're going to do something totally different there that nobody's ever seen before in the states, which is really exciting to us.
T
Tina5:05
That's super exciting, and I'm so excited for TNT to be part of Westgate. One of the most amazing Federal projects is Santana Row. Like the entire Bay Area will drive there. And when I saw that, I was like, 'Oh my God, these guys know how to make places come to life.' Share with the real estate community that logic. It's like, we're not being like Santana Row, but Westgate's far from there. We're just at the beginning. But just talk about that logic of building places.
J
Jeffrey Kreshek5:36
There's building blocks that go into that. It's the physical space, it's how the consumer engages with it. Those are all really, really important. What we get a lot of credit for Santana Row—and it's a fantastic project and it's probably one of the best projects I've ever worked on in my career—but we don't take a different logic or different approach to Santana Row than we do at Westgate. We treat Westgate just like we treat Santana Row. The thinking, the process, the discipline of how do we take this and add that to it, make it a better place. But the discipline and the thought process and how we approach a Westgate is absolutely the same as how we approach a Santana Row. Not every place can rise to the level of a Santana Row, obviously. But the greatest compliment I can ever hear when we're at Santana Row is, 'I don't know why, I just love this place.' Like that's what we're striving for. We want a relationship that's deeper than just commerce.
T
Tina6:29
And you talk about moving mahjong pieces around. The way I describe it is it's like having that chemistry set you got for Christmas, you know, when you were 10. You mix a little this, a little that, and you hope you don't burn your eyebrows off.
J
Jeffrey Kreshek6:40
That's right. You try to get that chemistry just right.
T
Tina6:45
For TNT, we're an Asian grocer, and normally Asian grocers are functional. Like you go because you need to go because you can buy the ingredients that you typically need like at a normal grocery store. We want to evolve our grocery store beyond the functional. We want to be the place where people want to go, not just where they need to go. Right? It's a whole experience. And then to take the TNT experience and then to put it into what Federal has and Jeff has as a vision, I think that's going to be a force multiplier.
J
Jeffrey Kreshek7:18
Force multiplier. Yeah. Amazing. We're going to do it.
T
Tina7:21
We have been talking about Westgate Center in San Jose. This is going to be TNT's first store in California. I wanted Jeff to share with all of us, like, why do you think Westgate Center is going to be a great location for a TNT Supermarket?
J
Jeffrey Kreshek7:39
You've got obviously a density of Asian population, but what you have is the dominant project in the market. You have the Silicon Valley, which is just unbelievable. Like, we're close enough—you're in there. You're not close, you're in Silicon Valley. And you're bringing something fun. The competition in the market, the other offerings in the market, they're functional. It's everything we've been talking about. And I go back to my experience with your grand opening. The word I would have for that grand opening was it was fun. I came home and said to my kids, 'This is where I've been. This is what I've been doing.' And they said, 'So how was it?' I said, 'It was fun. Look at all this stuff.' I started showing them all these candies, ginger candies. And my kids were like, 'Ginger candies? We're not eating ginger candies.' I came back and there was just like a sea of wrappers all over my house. They were gone in like a day. And it was just fun. You're focusing on the experience, not just the function of shopping. There's too much retail out there that's just functional, and it's just not going to work.
T
Tina8:40
Can I show you something?
J
Jeffrey Kreshek8:41
Yeah, I want to see.
T
Tina8:42
Okay, give me one second. This one's done.
J
Jeffrey Kreshek8:46
So we came back to the office, and I don't know if you remember, but before we left, we had lunch in your conference room. And up on the cabinet on the left side behind where you were sitting was a little glass sculpture of a firefish. And I asked you, and you were calling this project Project Firefish. And I asked you why, and you told me the story of the firefish ascending the waterfall through the gates to become a dragon. All the symbolism behind it. And we came back to the office, and what we were really struck by is we were not only struck by the concept, we were struck by the leadership. It's every bit as important to us, the brand that we're doing business with, as well as the people we're doing business with. When we came back to the office, the first thing I did was I printed this picture out and I taped it to Christian's door as a daily reminder that this is a company we need to be paying attention to. And hopefully, this is a company that we're going to get the opportunity to do business with.
T
Tina9:44
Look at that. Can you believe that? What a lovely story. Thank you so much for sharing. Let's do this. Westgate Center, San Jose.
J
Jeffrey Kreshek9:50
All right, my turn. So Tina, I was absolutely blown away after going to your office. You have the wall of corporate values. This is originally a family-established company. It's obviously grown up quite a bit now, and you're a much larger organization than when you started. What makes TNT different than other retailers, other grocery stores? What's the secret to your success?
T
Tina10:20
I would say number one is our people. Like, I wake up every day because I'm inspired by the people that I work with. And I think that we have so much fun together that it's almost like with the right—surrounded by the right team, and I bet you have this too, you just feel like you can do anything together. I tell them, like, I would sell sand in the desert with you. Like, we happen to sell bananas and bok choy today, but I would sell sand in the desert with you because I think we cohesively are like unstoppable. We all feel like we are trying to make a big difference for our customers, and it shows. And like, what's on the center, I feel like it's such an honor to have our food be at the center of your kitchen table. I feel like that we are all gathered around. I think we have some responsibility to do Asian food justice and bring the best of all we got to non-Asians so that we can build more bridges and eat together and have fun together, create memories together. Like, that is really the food for joy that we aspire to.
J
Jeffrey Kreshek11:26
It's fantastic, and it shows in everything you do. So I have one last question for you. You asked me why TNT at Westgate. So I'm going to ask you, why did you choose the Bay Area as the first location in California?
T
Tina11:40
Very important reason why we chose the Bay Area is because of you, and because of Christian, and because of Federal. Because you guys wanted it. You guys—like I said, I come here and there's like nobody knows anything about TNT. And then you guys did your due diligence, you came to us, you discovered us, and you're like, 'We got to make this happen.' So we're going to get ready and we're going to do this. Westgate Center, we're coming for you, okay? Are we going to do this? We're doing this.
J
Jeffrey Kreshek12:10
We couldn't be more excited. And honestly, from the bottom of my heart, like, honored to be able to partner with TNT and with you and with the whole team. And we're just truly honored to be able to do this. We're excited.
T
Tina12:21
I'm so glad we got to spend some time together today. Thank you so much. Let's get this going. Let's make Westgate Center happen.
J
Jeffrey Kreshek12:27
We're excited. Let's do it.
T
Tina12:29
Let's do it.