RT-MART in Taiwan

RT MART is a Taiwanese retail store chain that sells clothing, electronic appliance, produce, package food, bakery goods, food to go (Taiwanese style pizza). It is very similar to Target in America. However, to enjoy all the discounts, you have to become a member, free of charge.

All major cities in Taiwan should have at least one RT MART. These cities include Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Chiayi, Tainan, Taitung, etc. Below is a link with all the locations written in Chinese only:
http://official.rt-mart.com.tw/store_new.asp

At the entrance, there are regular size shopping carts as well as smaller shopping baskets with handles, making the shopping experience less heavy. :) Throughout the year, there are different major sale at the store, and the store sets up different theme decoration relevant to the sale. In this case, a Japanese spring sale is being displayed at the store.

Beside the traditional sale signs inside the store, RT MART has many creative way to promote its products. Here, they use boxes of thermo bottles to build a cat/mouse?

Here, they use toothpaste containers to build a ferris wheel. Taiwan's tissue companies love to use cartoon characters pictures for packaging. LINE is the most popular messaging APP in Taiwan, and their emoji characters are well known.

There is a good variety of cereal brands in RT MART, but if you are looking for your good American cereal, chances are that you probably can't find them here. Still, you will recognize some of them, and you most likely will take a long time choosing the right one.

Beside the big brands such as Coca Cola, you can also find some local drinks that are only sold in Taiwan. Here are some fruit flavored vinegar drinks.

There are always long lines for the cashier at night.

Remember to have your membership card out and scanned at the beginning of the checkout.

RT MART opens at 7:30am and closes at 11pm every day. There are connection buses from nearby MRT stations for some locations. If you feel hungry after shopping or you have to wait awhile for the next bus, you can dine at one of the restaurants outside the cashier area.

There is a "scratching fun"(刮刮樂) lottery shop. Each scratching card cost between NTD 100 to NTD 1000. Rules for each card are different based on the price of the card. The vendors cannot communicate in English. If you want details and instructions on this topic, you can leave a comment. We will do a separate post if we have enough requests.