The Corner of Stevens Creek and De Anza Is Getting Its Anchors Back

At 7:30 a.m. on Friday, October 9, people began lining up outside 20558 Stevens Creek Boulevard. By the time Hashi Market opened at 10, the line ran out the door and filled the whole parking lot, "snaking like a TSA queue," according to SFGATE's opening-day report. About 1,700 customers came through that day. Cashiers rang up 300 transactions an hour for most of the morning.

Until that morning, the storefront had been dark since 2023. Sprouts Farmers Market was its last tenant, according to the City Manager's Newsletter from September 30.

A few doors down, a bookstore is moving into the former Party City, and a bank and a bakery are taking spaces on the same stretch of Stevens Creek. Several of these new tenants picked Cupertino as their first or flagship stop in the region, so a corner people have mostly used for errands is starting to bring in shoppers from other cities.

The vacancy ledger, one storefront at a time

Here's the stretch of Stevens Creek around De Anza, built from the City of Cupertino's own business updates and the retailers' announcements.

Add up the empty years and the result is long. The Vitamin Shoppe space at 20803 sat empty for about seven years before Preferred Bank moved its Silicon Valley Regional Office into the 3,280 square feet there. The bank keeps weekday hours, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The two largest spaces, the former Sprouts and the former Party City, are getting new tenants within about four weeks of each other.

Hashi chose Cupertino for its West Coast debut

Hashi Market started in New York City and has six stores there. Cupertino is its first location on the West Coast, according to the Mercury News. The company is also looking at sites in Milpitas, San Mateo and Union City, with about 10 new stores expected between now and mid-2027. That means Cupertino came first, ahead of any of those sites.

The company has said why. Operations Director Justin Li told the Mercury News that customers here are "knowledgeable, curious and increasingly interested in high-quality products with a clear sense of origin." Ava Liu, head of operations, gave SFGATE a shorter answer: "it's a central place for California. Apple is here. Everyone knows it." Liu also called this location the company's flagship store in California.

The company had plenty of options. In its opening-day coverage, SFGATE listed Hashi as part of a run of big Asian supermarket openings in the Bay Area this year. T&T Supermarket opened in San Jose in June. Tokyo Central opened in Emeryville in February and drew some 8,000 people. H Mart opened its Dublin store in March to about 10,000 shoppers. Next to those numbers, 1,700 on day one is modest. But this store is about 20,000 square feet, and the crowd that showed up wasn't only from Cupertino. SFGATE's report opens with a group of San Jose coworkers who took an early lunch to stand in that line.

What's actually inside

The Mercury News describes the concept as part supermarket and part "mini department store." The parts that stand out in the reporting so far:

• Hokkaido imports across the store, including beef, rice, cheesecake, premium chocolate and melons priced at $59
• Seafood sourced directly from Japan, per Li
• An in-house bakery and two large aisles of lifestyle and beauty products from brands like Senka, Canmake and Bonbory
• Three large prepared-food kiosks serving chicken katsu bentos, curry bowls, salmon teriyaki and $26 A5 wagyu rice bowls
• A sushi wall along the far right side of the store
• Kitchen appliances and skincare, which round out the department-store side

According to KRON4, the store is open daily from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. That's later than most grocery stores around here. The store also plans to take 30% off all sushi after 8 p.m., something its New York stores already do. When SFGATE reported it in October, Liu described the discount as coming "soon," so ask at the counter before planning a late dinner around it.

The bookstore is larger than the ones the South Bay lost

A few doors away, the former Party City at 20740 Stevens Creek Boulevard has been empty since early 2025, according to a March 2026 City of Cupertino weekly letter. Barnes & Noble's store locator lists the Cupertino Crossroads store as "Opening November 4th 2026." That date was this Wednesday, so call the store to make sure it opened on schedule before you head over. The date has moved once already. In April, a company spokesperson told KRON4 the store would open in "late October."

The store's size makes more sense against recent bookstore history in the South Bay. In its April report, San José Spotlight listed the Barnes & Noble locations that have closed, at Almaden Plaza and Eastridge Mall in San Jose and at The Pruneyard in Campbell. The one recent opening nearby was a 7,000-square-foot store in Los Gatos in 2025. The Cupertino store is 19,200 square feet, almost three times the size of the Los Gatos store, and it's part of a national plan to open 60 stores in 2026.

The locator lists Toys & Games and Vinyl among the store's features. San José Spotlight reported that the chain has moved toward a design modeled on independent bookstores, with curated selections. Audrey Guo, an assistant professor of economics at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business, explained the reasoning to the outlet: "With social media and the growing popularity of book clubs and meetups, bookstores host events and sell things like toys, games and calendars as well." A store built around events is designed to bring people in for an evening, which pairs well with a grocery store next door that's open until 11.

Planning around the new corner

The two big openings change how the intersection works across a normal week. A few practical notes from what's been reported:

1. The opening-day crowd was a one-day event. The parking-lot line SFGATE described was for the October 9 grand opening, which also had a ribbon-cutting, a performance by local Yosakoi dance troupe Uzumaru, and a cutting of a 200-pound bluefin tuna. Expect a busier lot than when the Sprouts space was empty, but don't plan around a crowd like that one.
2. Hashi's prepared food works as a lunch spot. SFGATE pointed to nearby tech workers and De Anza College students, just down the road, as a natural audience for the kiosks. Weekday lunch is likely to be the store's busiest window.
3. The bookstore's hours aren't posted yet. The locator gives a phone number, (408) 647-8580, but no hours, so call before making a special trip.
4. Preferred Bank keeps weekday hours only, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Still on the way along Stevens Creek

One more opening is in the works. The City of Cupertino says Specialty's Café & Bakery will take over the former Le Boulanger at 20488 Stevens Creek Boulevard, about 6,550 square feet. Plans for tenant improvements had been submitted by the end of September, but the city hasn't given an opening date.

Farther west, Jingege & YaoYao opened in late August in a 4,370-square-foot space at Marketplace, 19628 Stevens Creek Boulevard. It serves Chinese food and is open daily from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. The September 30 City Manager's Newsletter covered both, along with Hashi and Preferred Bank. That's four Stevens Creek business updates in one issue.

The city has been promoting the Hashi opening too. Its October 16 news post pointed to coverage in SFGATE and USA Today and included Mayor Kitty Moore's welcome. That kind of attention is what City Manager Tina Kapoor described back in April, when the Barnes & Noble deal was still under review and she told San José Spotlight the city was looking forward to seeing the space "serve the community and contribute to the vibrancy of the area."

If you live near Stevens Creek and De Anza and want to know how all this nearby activity might show up in your own home's value, Ashley Mateo follows this corridor block by block and can walk you through it. Start with your instant home valuation, and we can go over the details together.