Springfield couple opens Main Street Asian Market

QuickTake:

Patcha Lopez and Ryan Borden, who own and operate Little Thai Elephant food truck in Eugene, are the proprietors of a new Asian foods store in east Springfield.

Sally Finsand stopped by Main Street Asian Market in Springfield Dec. 16 to shop for ingredients for Filipino dishes.

“I’ve been looking for sweet black rice,” Finsand, who lives in Dexter, told Lookout Eugene-Springfield. She planned to make biko, a sticky rice dessert.

The market at 4301 Main St. opened Dec. 14, bringing Asian products to east Springfield. The shop’s shelves are stocked with packaged snacks and candies, sauces, soup bases and grains. Freezers carry frozen gyoza, lumpia and other specialties, as well as fish balls and more meats. A produce section has fresh vegetables, noodles, kimchi, yam cakes and more.

It’s the first retail shop for owner Patcha Lopez and her husband, Ryan Borden. What started as an idea to supply vegetables, sauces and other ingredients for the couple’s Thai food truck has grown into an opportunity to fulfill requests for local customers.

The Springfield couple owns and operates Little Thai Elephant food truck at Oakshire Public House in Eugene. The food truck is an offshoot of Lucky Thai Elephant Restaurant in Newport.

“So with working with vendors to get stuff for the restaurant, a lot of this stuff we have in the store is actually the same products,” said Borden, 39. “We just buy it by the case.”

Main Street Asian Market in Springfield, Dec. 16, 2025. Credit: Isaac Wasserman / Lookout Eugene-Springfield / Catchlight / RFA

Borden and Lopez, 36, were looking to open another restaurant when they started shopping for real estate. But a national outage affecting the wholesaler they were using to source produce for the food truck led them to turn to other suppliers. They realized they had more product than they needed and could sell it.

Borden, who worked for Budweiser for 20 years, wanted to open a shop to use the retail knowledge he had gained over his career. They found the 1,800-square-foot Main Street location in August and spent four months getting the store ready.

The couple goes to Portland once a week to buy produce. They have several other vendors for the packaged goods, including JFC International, an Asian food and beverage distributor, Borden said. They keep backup vendors in their system to help them weather outages on products like fish sauces. And now the couple’s food truck buys its ingredients from their own market.

“Resturants like very consistent recipes,” Borden said. “These recipes rely on products like that. So now it’s almost like a safety net for ourselves.”

Ray Yohe shops at Main Street Asian Market in Springfield, Dec. 16, 2025. Credit: Isaac Wasserman / Lookout Eugene-Springfield / Catchlight / RFA

Because Lopez is Thai, the store carries many products from the southeast Asian country. But customers will also find foods from Japan, Philippines, China, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan and more, Borden said.

Lopez and Borden researched products and posted on social media ahead of their opening to ask potential customers what they wanted. Some asked for lumpia wrappers, so the couple stocked multiple options.

“We really relied on that, on our research phase, but we’re still researching,” Borden said. “It kind of is a process that never ends.”

Another request was Korean fish-shaped ice cream sandwiches.

“People were asking for these, so we got them, and then we can’t keep up,” Borden said. “We already sold out of strawberry.”

They take requests from customers who visit and call into the shop. Many have requested specific sauces, such as chili oil with shrimp crunch.

Leilani Yohe holds mochi at Main Street Asian Market in Springfield, Dec. 16, 2025. Credit: Isaac Wasserman / Lookout Eugene-Springfield / Catchlight / RFA

Borden said he was overwhelmed with support from the community at the market’s grand opening. They sold out of some products in the first 30 minutes, including Chinese cloud toast and imported Red Bull from Japan.

The small white-and-black shop joins other Springfield buildings with “Simpsons” murals by local artist Bayne Gardner. The painter was on-site during the store’s grand opening to add a design of the youngest Simpson, Maggie, to an exterior wall.

As they look toward the future, Borden said the couple wants to add household items, like knives, rice bowls, chopsticks and peelers, as well as another freezer to be able to stock more meat. They also plan to hire more staff.

The store joins one other Asian grocery market in Springfield, Uptown Asian Grocery (1460 Mohawk Blvd.), and three shops in Eugene: Eugene Asian Market (959 Pearl St.), Sunrise Asian Food Market (70 W. 29th Ave.) and King’s Asian Market (2100 W. 11th Ave.).