Shopping at Giant Foods: Chinese American Supermarkets in Northern California (review)

Alfred Yee's history of Chinese American supermarkets in Northern California explores the history of an understudied era of ethnic enterprise—independent supermarkets and local supermarket chains that sold American foods. Yee explores how Chinese American supermarkets achieved prominent success in European American neighborhoods during the early and mid-twentieth century despite racial prejudice and, at the start, the owners' lack of previous experience with large-scale enterprise. The book is a valuable reference for scholars interested in supermarkets, immigrant entrepreneurship, and the development of Asian American business.

Shopping at Giant Foods thus offers a unique account of the emergence of the supermarket business before its corporate consolidation. Published histories of American supermarkets have focused mainly on spatial analysis, shopping, and large corporations. Independent stores and local chains, however, dominated Northern California from the 1930s to the 1970s. But their Chinese American owners kept few written records. Yee, a twenty-year veteran of the supermarket industry, interviewed numerous fellow participants about the business, its organization, and its human relations.

Yee starts his account with an excellent overview of the supermarket business from its origins in the 1920s to its rapid growth with suburbanization in the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s and 1970s, competitive pressures winnowed supermarkets down to the best managed and capitalized survivors, mostly national chain stores. He examines retailing, credit, wholesaling, and marketing, situating Northern California Chinese American supermarkets within a changing industry.

Yee then explores the socio-economic position of Chinese immigrants during his period of study, analyzing a backdrop of race relations, immigration patterns, and a legacy of ethnic entrepreneurship as a means of economic mobility. Chinese Americans chose to enter the supermarket industry because of their difficulty obtaining mainstream employment due to racial discrimination. Their resulting ethnic style of business management, Yee argues, was their greatest strength and weakness.

Yee's account of the rise and fall of Chinese American supermarkets explores how immigrants used ethnic business practices to gain an edge in an emerging market. He divides these supermarkets into two generations. The first generation of Chinese supermarkets often formed as partnerships of multiple persons and families who lived and worked in their stores. Beyond the labor savings, Chinese American workers also were willing to accept non-union jobs, lower wages, and longer hours than their European American counterparts. With few exceptions, Chinese American marketing strategy was also simple: use cheaper labor costs to offer the lowest prices. A second generation followed as the market matured. Once established, Chinese supermarkets needed increasing amounts of capital to succeed and obtained bank credit to finance larger, better-equipped stores. For a while, Chinese Americans prospered, increasing the social and economic status of owners and workers alike. With success however came worker demands for union wages and American work conditions, eroding the competitive price advantage enjoyed by Chinese American operations. The management of Chinese supermarkets, usually by consensus of multiple partners, also made them less agile as competition stiffened. Faced with an inability to keep up with large chains in the recession of the 1970s, the majority of Chinese American supermarket owners sold their businesses.

The major strength of Yee's analysis comes from his interview data. Yee explores the relationships among the participants, noting patterns of conflict and cooperation among partners. He explores labor relations among workers, unions, and management in great detail, though curiously he pays virtually no attention to gender. The book could have been strengthened by a more direct engagement in scholarly debates related to its findings. Yee does this deftly in his arguments about Chinese Americans, but given the richness of his data, a more direct conversation with the literature about supermarkets and immigrant entrepreneurship would have been fruitful. Although Yee addresses the question of how Chinese American supermarkets fit into the Northern California retail environment with two case studies, he could have examined the local supermarket context beyond Chinese...