Not long ago, shopping in the ethnic food aisle at metro Atlanta grocery stores meant choosing between among cans of chop suey and boxes of taco shells.

Sure, some farmer’s markets specialized in authentic international foods. If you wanted to serve duck feet or include dried chipotles in your recipe, you could always make the trek to the DeKalb Farmers Market near Decatur.

But in the past 18 months, mainstream grocers have rushed to put those offerings on a growing number of shelves in stores across metro Atlanta. Trace the northern arc of the region — Cobb, north Fulton, north DeKalb to Gwinnett — and you’ll find store managers are quickly shuffling their inventories to include an exotic new mix of foods.

Just over a year ago, a Publix store on Buford Highway near Buckhead closed its pharmacy section and restocked the shelves with the Mexican name-brand Bimbo sliced bread and bags of corn masa mix for scratch-made tamales. Nearby is the Hallmark card display in Spanish.

“We had a pharmacy that didn’t do well, so we shut it down and replaced it with an Hispanic section,” said Rick Urben, an assistant store manager with Publix for 12 years. “The Hispanic section is the No. 1 category in the grocery store right now.”

The Buford Highway Publix is one of five stores in the chain’s metro Atlanta group that’s marketing both to Latinos and others with a taste for the more authentic variety of ethnic food.

Business boom

In Gwinnett, just since November, the Super H Mart in Duluth and the Mercado Del Pueblo in Norcross have opened to serve the county’s exploding foreign-born population.

The Super H also has a Hispanic section. But it primarily caters to shoppers with a taste for foods from all over Asia. And Super H is staffing the store with people who know which specialized products to put on the shelves.

“For example, we have Chinese people as employees, because they know what the Chinese customers want,” said Super H store manager Jason Park. “I’m Korean, but that doesn’t mean I know what the Japanese customer needs, or what the Chinese customer needs.”

At a growing number of Kroger stores, the company is using its loyalty cards to identify purchasing spikes in brands popular with ethnic markets.

At his Buford Highway Publix store, Urben monitors his “Holidays and Fiestas in Mexico” calendar to anticipate seasonal demand for certain items. It’s handy to know, for example, that if Aug.ust 26 is around the corner, many customers will be preparing chile en nogada.

“There’s one where we load up on candles,” Urben said. “Another, they buy a lot of tuna — that’s Mexican New Year.”

According to the 2000 U.S. census, the local Hispanic population reached nearly 348,000. The number of Asian immigrants in metro Atlanta tops 136,000.

And the evidence at the local grocery store isn’t confined to the “las especialidades” aisle.

Walk through the Publix store on Buford Highway and you’ll find products with an ethnic flavor dispersed throughout the store. Over at the butcher’s case are tags in English and Spanish in front of beef sliced thin for fajitas. Down the aisle is a chilled case with a selection of queso and chorizo. Walk down the soaps and cleaners aisle and you’ll find large plastic bags full of Roma laundry detergent.

The detergent inside the bag may be similar to U.S. brands, but there’s a comfort factor that lands Roma in many shopping carts. “It’s just like if we went to Mexico and saw Tide there,” Urben said.

Learning curve

There is some trial and error involved as mainstream grocers add an array of unfamiliar products. Since the Buford Highway Publix store is a prototype for the chain, it’s used to test not only what customers will buy, but also which suppliers can keep up with demand.

“We had to investigate who could deliver,” Urben said. “Some of the mom-and-pop bakeries couldn’t keep up with demand.”

Which would be a shame, because sometimes people want their baked sweets fresh and the shelves of packaged Emperador-brand piruetas, Mirengue and Cremas de Nieve just won’t do.

The grocers are quick to point out that their customer base isn’t confined to recent immigrants. Many people from countries that don’t speak Spanish or an Asian language are discovering the new product lines and giving authentic ethnic cooking a try.

Meanwhile, the grocers catering primarily to ethnic food customers are careful to maintain a mix of products that could be found on store shelves throughout metro Atlanta.

“We [Super H] have a huge selection for our Anglo-American customers and we can compete with,” any big-box grocer, Park said.