Shopping at Giant Foods: Chinese American Supermarkets in Northern California

1 / Supermarkets

1 / Supermarkets s u p e r m a r k e t s a r e s o p r o s a i c and ubiquitous that historians have largely ignored them as institutions worthy of study. This is a serious oversight, because supermarkets are barometers of the local communities in which they do business. Supermarkets reflect their communities’ status, developing and evolving in step with local socioeconomic conditions. They fulfill the needs and desires of customers, and sometimes create them. During the two decades following World War II, which were characterized by the explosive growth of families and suburbs, shopping in a supermarket was one of the duties of the exemplary housewife and mother. Food from the supermarket was the nucleus of the family dinner. Supermarkets became social gathering-places of the neighborhoods in which they were located, places where shoppers often ran into their neighbors and friends. Shoppers purchased an increasing variety and quality of products made available by new technology. Supermarkets, in the meantime, continued to expand to accommodate new products and services. In sum, the history of supermarkets is as much a study about the communities in which they operate as about the industry itself. It was through the operation of supermarkets that Chinese Americans in Northern California quickly became part of the mainstream economy and gradually became part of the mainstream society. The supermarket was an American phenomenon that Chinese Americans opportunistically seized during the industry’s early development. They were able to do so because of a combination of fortuitous and propitious factors. Their supermarkets were not very different from their competitors. Chinese American operators of supermarkets were not trendsetters, but astute followers of the industry’s standards and innovations. They selectively adopted management and merchandising methods and spent only enough capital on equipment to meet basic needs, increase sales volume, and beat or match the competition. They 16 had one chief advantage that their competition did not have: low-cost labor. It resulted from labor practices based on employer-employee mutual obligations carried over from the old world. The operation of their supermarkets was the quintessential combination of Eastern and Western business practices , by which they were able to reap very good profits. Before narrating their history, highlighting the emergence and growth of the supermarket industry will illuminate the road markers that Chinese Americans followed. coming together Although the supermarket was not a completely innovative enterprise, all of its components came together in 1930. Until then, separate small stores made up the bulk of food retailing: stores selling only groceries, meat and seafood markets, confectioneries, bakeries, fruit and vegetable markets, delicatessens, and dairy stores. These food stores were located close to the customer and offeredavarietyof servicessuchascreditanddelivery.Therewerealreadychain stores, which were comprised of a group of stores under common ownership withcentralizedandstandardizedmanagement.Locatedincityneighborhoods, chain stores were spreading, but they were small and often one-person operations . The trend toward combination stores was well under way by 1929, but these stores, which were created by joining two or more specialty stores like grocery and meat, represented only about one-fifth of all food stores. During the 1920s, parts of the supermarket concept were used in many areasof thecountry.Cash-and-carry,forexample,wasrapidlyreplacingcredit and delivery as a more expedient and less expensive means for grocery purchasing by customers. Self-service, standardization, and simplification were practices that were synonymous with the Piggly Wiggly chain, which was founded in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1916. “Drive-in markets,” stores where customers drove their automobiles right up to the buildings and parked in free parking spaces, were common in the West and Southwest. The concept of one-stop shopping, which was based on large city markets that had separate retailers selling specific foods under the same roof, was gaining popularity among shoppers. Selling non-food products was a business identified with the general store, which also did approximately 60 percent of its sales volumeinfoodproducts.1 Exceptforfreeparking,theobjectivesof theseretailing methods were to reduce operating costs and selling prices, and consequently to bring in more customers and increase sales. During the Depression era, combining these features was a good business strategy because shoppers were looking for stores that offered low prices. Supermarkets • 17 In 1930, in Jamaica, Long Island, Michael J. Cullen opened what the public called a “warehouse grocery” in an abandoned garage with all the elements that defined a supermarket. He had proposed his retailing concepts to his previous employers, Kroger Grocery...