Local Business · Sunshine, Victoria
End of the Aisle: Dai Phat Supermarket Falls Dark as Landlord Moves In — and TDP Mart Takes Over
Dai Phat Supermarket closes · TDP Mart incoming as new tenant
294 Hampshire Road, Sunshine VIC 3020
Dai Phat Supermarket — Sunshine’s largest independent grocer — has lost its tenancy and its entire fitout. The landlord has now brought in TDP Mart as the incoming operator.
Dai Phat Supermarket, which opened at 294 Hampshire Road just before COVID and grew into Sunshine’s largest independent grocer, has closed after the landlord retook possession of the site. The business had taken over from a previous operator that failed at the same address, inheriting an empty shell and investing more than $500,000 fitting out fridges, freezers, and specialist meat and seafood counters. All of that infrastructure — along with remaining stock — has now been forfeited. The landlord has since moved to bring in TDP Mart as the new tenant.
294 Hampshire Road, Sunshine — Dai Phat Supermarket operated approximately 1,000 m² on one of the suburb’s main retail strips before losing its tenancy to the landlord.
“Half a million dollars in cold infrastructure — fridges, freezers, meat counters, seafood display — all gone, before a single dollar of stock.”
The lease structure
Dai Phat held the head lease over the Hampshire Road site and sublet portions of the floor to a separate butcher and seafood shop operating within the same premises. The grocery and produce floor remained consistently busy. The specialist counters, however, struggled badly as consumers pulled back on discretionary spending — seafood and premium cuts among the first to go during the cost-of-living squeeze.
How it unravelled
When the subtenants could no longer sustain their operations, the financial burden fell entirely on Dai Phat as head lessee. With part of the floor no longer generating revenue, the overall tenancy became untenable and the landlord moved in. It is a harsh outcome for a business that survived a pandemic, refurbished a failed site at enormous personal cost, and built real community patronage — only to be undone by a structural weakness in its own lease arrangement.
TDP Mart moves in
The landlord has wasted little time finding a replacement, with TDP Mart confirmed as the incoming operator at 294 Hampshire Road. For Dai Phat’s former customers, there will at least be a grocer back on the site. For the Dai Phat operators, the loss is total — years of work, a $500,000-plus fitout, and their stock, all left behind.
Hampshire Road is one of Sunshine’s main commercial corridors — TDP Mart is set to become the next operator at the 294 Hampshire Road site.
