Jenny Yang Turns Immigrant Grocery Stores Into Comedy Clubs
The stand-up comedian's summer tour has grown from five shows to nearly 20, staging sets beside rice aisles in cities with large immigrant communities.
Comedian Jenny Yang has spent the summer performing stand-up inside cultural grocery stores, converting checkout lanes and shelving aisles into makeshift comedy clubs for a night.
The Good Egg Immigrant Grocery Store Standup Comedy Tour began June 5 in Los Angeles, where Yang lives, and has since traveled to Minneapolis, Phoenix and other cities. Originally planned as five performances, it has grown to nearly 20. After stops in New York and San Francisco, the tour will end Sept. 26 back in Los Angeles, where Yang plans to film a performance for a proposed comedy special.
Yang, a stand-up and sketch veteran whose acting credits include the Netflix series "The Brothers Sun," described the project as "the most politically and creatively fulfilling project" she has done. She said it is partly a response to immigration crackdowns by President Donald Trump's administration affecting Asian, Latino and Black communities. She and her team selected store locations and nonprofits to receive donations based on recommendations from local organizations.
"I got to buy a bunch of small snacks and shrimp chips and throw it into the audience every time I felt like a joke didn't land," Yang said. "I mean this is my dream."
The idea took shape last December in Taiwan, where Yang was born, after a failed round of in vitro fertilization. Sitting in front of an omelet breakfast, she lamented not having "one good egg" to start a family, while headlines about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations dominated her attention. A former labor organizer, she combined the two threads into a tour.
After emceeing an April gala for the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus, Yang pitched the concept to the group, which hired her and opened its nationwide network of community leaders and immigrant-focused nonprofits. "I think comedy is healing and unifying," executive director Aarti Kohli said.
In July, Yang performed at Shuang Hur Supermarket in Minneapolis, half a block from where ICE agents fatally shot Alex Pretti. Manager Henry Zhou said shelves were reconfigured near the checkout lanes to fit 150 chairs. "Everybody got in line to buy some snacks and some drinks. A few people even did a bit of grocery shopping," he said, adding that he would host again.
Chains such as H Mart and 99 Ranch Market, along with smaller stores, generate $55.8 billion in revenue, according to a 2025 report from market research firm IBISWorld. Willow Lung, founding director of the Small Business Anti-Displacement Network, called such stores "cross-cultural meeting grounds" that act as a "main street" for communities. For more than a year, she said, international grocers have struggled with tariffs and the absence of customers afraid to venture out, with some closing temporarily or permanently.
"There's a lot of doom and gloom," Yang said. "But, we got to make room for joy."
This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI), in accordance with our editorial policy.
