Rotterdam entrepreneur Kees van Vuuren is starting a chain of immigrant supermarkets, and hopes to eventually open 150-200 shops, especially in those areas that have witnessed the disappearance of small grocery shops in the past decade. Van Vuuren hopes that the shops, under the name Waikiki, will improve the atmosphere in unsafe neighborhoods and encourage integration, by being employed by many young immigrants seeking franchises, and encouraging entrepreneurship in localized neighborhoods. Waikiki shops will offer products of Lebanese, Polish, Russian, Surinamese, Czech, Turkish, and Dutch origins, and also offer halal or Islamically permissible goods.
