Shopping at Giant Foods: Chinese American Supermarkets in Northern California

Preface

preface w r i t i n g a b o u t w h a t o n e k n o w s b e s t helps to make an interesting and engaging topic. For over twenty years I was solidly involved in the Chinese American grocery and supermarket business. After graduating from college with a bachelor of science degree in 1973, I went to work for a Chinese American supermarket chain in the Sacramento area. This was meant to be a temporary job while I searched for a professional career that was congruous with my education. In reality, the job provided a welcome suspension in decision-making about the direction of my life. Getting a job in a supermarket was not difficult, because I had many years of experience workinginagrocerystore .This“temporary”joblastedfifteenyears.Iwasemployed at Jumbo Markets from 1975 to 1989 as a courtesy clerk, cashier, stock clerk, warehouseman, and head clerk (third person in charge under the manager and assistant manager). While at Jumbo, I was also a shop steward for the Retail Clerks Union Local 588 for a short period. The job provided a solid middle-class income and outstanding health and welfare benefits, which were won by the hard negotiating of the local retail clerks union. Life was comfortable, to say the least, for a full-time clerk with union wages and benefits. It was easy to drudge on for years, leaving work behind each day when quitting time arrived. For a young person, the routine physical work was not very challenging, but it could be stupefying. On the other hand, the rapport between clerks and customers and the camaraderie among the clerks helped mitigate much of the mental monotony. I knew I would not remain a lifetime grocery clerk, but I procrastinated for a long time before I made the break, returning to college to pursue additional degrees for a career as a college instructor. During those years as a clerk, I learned much about the supermarket business , in particular the Chinese American operations. I met countless people who talked and gossiped about who did what recently or in the past. Among vii them were store employees, managers, owners, salesmen, deliverymen, vendors , and so forth—people who were in the business for decades and people who owned or worked for competing stores. There were always plenty of anecdotes and stories, the veracity of which ranged from factual to exaggerated to fabricated. But carefully scrutinized and cross-checked, they contributed toafairlyaccurateaccountof theworkingsandhistoriesof thevariousChinese American operations. Prior to my employment at Jumbo Markets, my family and I had already been involved in the grocery store and supermarket business. My late father worked in the Sacramento area as a “butcher” (nowadays called a meatcutter ) for a few years in General Food Market before becoming a minor partner in Fine Food Market from 1956 to 1964. Established in 1939, Fine Food Market was one of the earlier Chinese American supermarkets and a member of Famous Food Markets, a cooperative providing purchasing, advertising, and promotional services. While a young teenager, I worked part-time at Fine Food Market for two summers, my first undertaking in the grocery business. From 1967 to 1975, my father operated a small supermarket, Florin Market. I worked in Florin Market during my high school and early college years— after classes, on weekends, and during summers. Later, while I was at Jumbo, my two brothers and other partners operated a four-supermarket chain during the early 1980s. Although my brothers had over thirty years of experience between them, the stores were not successful for reasons similar to those detailed in this study. My older brother then ran two other small supermarkets until he retired in the mid-1990s. For a few years I worked weekends and summers in one of them while attending graduate school. My younger brother has since become a vendor for a national snack food company. Most of the people I socialized with and knew before I reentered college were people in the grocery store and supermarket business. It was from this background that I thus began research for this study. I knew as much or more about the details and nuances of nearly every aspect of the grocery business as the people I interviewed. Hence, they were comfortable recounting their experiences, feeling that I understood their sentiments. Their anecdotes and stories provided material to construct histories that heretofore have not been recorded. I have met...