Kim Phat grew out of a Papineau Avenue apartment, where Yip Chee Sing, a Cambodian-Chinese refugee who reached Montreal in 1979 after four years in a Thai camp, began buying 45-kilo sacks of rice and reselling them to his community. The first storefront opened in Chinatown in 1982 under the name Bangkok, joined by a second on Victoria in Côte-des-Neiges. In 1986 he closed both and opened a larger store on chemin de la Côte-des-Neiges as Kim Phat, the name meaning gold and fortune. Brossard followed in 1993, Saint-Michel in 2001, Saint-Laurent in 2019. The stores stock produce, specialty meat cuts and pork uncommon in conventional groceries, imports from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Korea and China, a house bakery and a private label. Sobeys took a majority stake in 2018, and the founder's children run the business.