V Market in Vancouver, Washington, isn’t setting out to be another place to grab quick essentials and dash. Instead, imagine a place that keeps all your favorite foods in stock, serves delicious, authentic fusion flavors, and has over a dozen local craft beers on tap. With electric charging stations available, both you and your vehicle can refuel. In a world of online conveniences, the convenience store often feels anything but. Paul Singh knows the struggle. Running this type of business is in his blood. But instead of shrinking with the rest of brick-and-mortar stores, the Singh family asked a different question, “What if a convenience store could become a neighborhood anchor again?”
Paul Singh calls the future V Market, scheduled to open in December 2025. It is imagined not as another petrol-and-chips stop, but as a miniature ecosystem of culture, food, sustainability, and community care. A place for neighbors to meet face-to-face again.
A Neighborhood Store Designed for Community
This isn’t a Silicon Valley experiment. It’s a multi-generation family that knows supply chains, labor, fuel margins, refrigeration, food safety, and why most convenience locations never evolve.
That pragmatism creates freedom.
Because the family understood the cost structures involved, they could challenge them. Because they understood customer behavior, they could rethink it. They stopped asking “How do we survive?” and began asking “How do we serve?”
The result is a three-part model: a specialty grocer, an Indian fusion pub and an electric vehicle charging station. Paul Singh explains it’s unlike your typical minimart, “This is more of a hub where people can get what they need, take a break, charge up their cars.” It’s a modern version of the old neighborhood store, but with charging ports instead of gas pump islands.
Electric-Vehicle Charging in Vancouver for Renters: A Community Gap
While the growth of electric vehicles offers many advantages for everyday commuters, those benefits are often limited to people who own their homes. Renters, in particular, face challenges because long charging times force them to rely on public charging stations, which can be inconvenient and uncomfortable. Traditional gas stations are not equipped to address this issue.
V Market changes this dynamic by recognizing the gap as an opportunity for neighborhood-scale public benefit rather than a limitation. Singh posed a simple but powerful question: “Why not place EV chargers near apartment complexes to give renters a real option?” From that idea, a new model was born.
Rather than pushing customers to “fuel up and go,” this business model is designed around lingering. Visitors can charge their car, meet neighbors, grab a fusion lunch, shop, and decompress. Instead of scrolling on your phone alone, you have the opportunity to spark conversations and share space with your neighbors.
It is a relational model, not a transactional one.
The Singh family recognizes that technology has replaced storefronts, delivery has replaced interaction, and social isolation quietly became the economy’s side effect. But V Market pushes in the opposite direction: local beers on tap, fusion dishes that blend cultural lineages, and space intentionally designed for community. As Paul Singh sees it, this is the perfect place for such innovation because “Washington is pushing for the EV charging stations more than any other state in the west.”
Bank of the Pacific Saw a Vision Worth Backing
Dreams still face economic reality, so securing smart financing mattered and Paul Singh couldn’t have brought his innovation to life without Bank of the Pacific. The family sees V Market not as an endpoint, but a restart. A way to give neighbors a reason to show up again, together, in real time.
Jeff Tainer, commercial banker with Bank of the Pacific, understood Paul’s vision and knew it would be a Vancouver asset. “This is a state-of-the-art convenience store without any similar competition in Clark County,” Jeff says. “The additional amenities will draw traffic. The attached pub house will also serve the neighborhood in a fresh way.”
Instead of treating V Market like another convenience build, the bank evaluated its cultural and economic footprint. Small business loans may keep doors open, but community investment keeps neighborhoods alive. For a business model centered on gathering and connection, face-to-face banking mattered just as much. This wasn’t a purely digital transaction; it was a commitment between two regional partners investing in one another.
V Market
8417 NE 72nd Avenue, Vancouver
Bank of the Pacific is a Member FDIC and Equal Housing Lender. NMLS #417480
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