Lucky Brothers Market owner Zaw Thant, right, shows Ezra Nei, left, frozen fish and sausages in the specialty Burmese store in Waterloo. About a year-and-a-half after the first Burmese refugees came to Waterloo for work, the first Burmese business has opened its doors. Photo by Matthew Putney/Waterloo Courier.
WATERLOO (AP) — As the ethnic makeup of Black Hawk County changes, so does the diversity of the business climate.
About a year-and-a-half after the first Burmese refugees came to Waterloo for work, the first Burmese business has opened its doors.
Zaw Min Thant, 28, owner of Lucky Brothers Asian Food Market in downtown Waterloo, first arrived in the U.S. in May 2010 from a Burmese refugee camp in Malaysia. Around the same time, the first Burmese refugees arrived in Waterloo to take jobs at Tyson Fresh Meats plant.
Thant went to Marshalltown to work at JBS Swift & Co., a meat processor there. In Marshalltown, Thant befriended, Win Kyaw the owner of a Golden Land, an Asian food store that served the growing Burmese population there. The two saw other business opportunities with the continuing influx of Burmese workers into Iowa.
“He had the idea,” Thant said.
Kyaw loaned Thant some inventory, helped him apply for a license to sell food and with other details. He opened the business in November.
“This is my first business,” Thant said.
Since the 1990s, thousands political dissidents and Karen and Chin ethnic minorities have fled Myanmar, as Burma is now called by its military government.
Since 2010, hundreds of refugee Burmese workers have moved to the Waterloo area to take jobs at the Tyson Fresh Meats plant. Thant said he anticipates the Burmese workers will want a taste of home. He also plans to carry items for Filipino, Vietnamese and Thai customers.
“They say every week they go to Cedar Rapids (to shop),” Thant said, adding he wants to stock the items people leave town to find.
“Let me know; I’ll order it,” he said.
Thant faces some obstacles in getting established. He admits he has a limited English skills right now and doesn’t have money to advertise.
“A lot of people come in, they don’t know I’m here,” Thant said.
In the last three years, other businesses in the location, at the corner of Sycamore Street and Fourth Street have not lasted beyond a few months.
Business is slow during most weekdays with most of his customers coming on Sundays, he said.
Burmese refugees have been resettled into Iowa since 2007 with 128 arriving in the Des Moines metro area that year. A couple years later, Burmesebusinesses opened there.
“It really doesn’t take that long for the need to be met,” said Valerie Stubbs, director of the U.S. Committee on Refugees and Immigrants Des Moines field office.
Chin residents have established a pair of restaurants in the Des Moines area and Karen residents have opened a couple of food stores, Stubbs said.
She said such businesses help create a cohesive community for the immigrant population.
“It’s a challenge for them,” she said, adding the new businesses show their resilience.
“You can really see and appreciate their survivor attitude,” Stubbs said.
That attitude isn’t new to Waterloo. The city has a long history of immigrants settling here. Thousands of Bosnian refugees came to the area in the 1990’s. Since then, Bosnian restaurants, stores and bakeries have opened and been successful over the last decade.
Thant said he hopes to duplicate that success. Stubbs said that success would benefit everyone in the community.