Update: July 25, 2009Today's Toronto Star reports that T&T taken over by a Loblaw subsidiary. I am not really happy about this, though I imagine T&T must be.
In my own experience, western grocery stores raise and lower prices at whim (my preferred brand of milk fluctuates between $4.69/2L to $5.19/2L every few weeks at the same neighborhood Loblaw store).
So I will have to keep an eye on what happens to our beloved T&T (T&T Toronto Store near Docks, photo) over the coming months.
Should it morph into the usual western grocery store, then I will keep shopping at the Asian supermarkets like Ming Yuan (googlemap).
Original Post: How T&T Web Site Hard to Find
To perhaps 99.95 percent of the general population, the name of this Chinese grocery store in Mississauga (T&T) means nada nothing zippo zilch. To the other point oh five percent, however, this is apparently big news, since many of them have been visiting my Mississauga Chinese Centre page, eager for food news.
The new 'T & T Supermarket' reference on that page is part of a quote about shopping for Chinese grocery items in the area west of Toronto. Though I had not even remembered the quote, the search engines certainly did.
As with all company names that include characters such as the ampersand (&) in print, they are tricky to locate in directories like phone books and search engines. And so for some months, I had many visitors to this page, which I attributed to a keen interest in Chinese lifestyle. That is, I did until I actually looked at the search term used.
Then I realized that, rather than my brilliant story, the big draw was this 'new' Chinese grocery store in town. Then I felt bad for the frustrated searchers. Imagine coming to this page, skimming through the contents and maybe even missing the T & T reference in all the other words.
So one day a month or so ago, I drove by the location and saw that construction was nearly completed and I posted a note to that effect on that page. Then our community paper ran a full-page ad (with the website name) announcing the Grand Opening. Turned out that the actual website for this company is www.tnt-supermarket.com. Now who would stumble upon that one? Looks like a shop for explosives, no? And these people were looking for food, not fireworks.
I'm mentioning this on the blog so the search engines will have yet another way to direct people to this Chinese grocery. It can also serve as a cautionary tale for anyone planning to name a web site or a business. Think about it long and hard before you plunk down the money to register the name. Make sure it's easy to spell.
And in case you are wondering if, perhaps, given the hyphenated name of my blog, that I am a bit hypocritical, well, this doesn't apply to blogs. Most of you get here by clicking the blogger scroll, a search engine link or hot link from my site or email signature. I'll bet real money that the only two people in the world who actually ever TYPE my blog name are me and my friend Teena in Australia.
