Ralphs
Glorious.
No, keep your pants on – I didn’t let my grammar slip. Ralphs, the oldest supermarket chain on the West Coast and a Southern California icon, does not have an apostrophe in its name. It’s not Ralph’s (the supermarket which is owned by Ralph, such as Roth’s in Salem, the supermarket chain owned by Orville Roth) but rather Ralphs, the name of a supermarket chain started in 1873 by George A. Ralphs in downtown Los Angeles, which I’m sure gave Reedsport a run for its money at the time.
Ha ha, this is a small town. In your face, old roommate!
Until I got to college, I had always assumed that Fred Meyer was a national chain. I mean, how could it not be? Without Fred Meyer, where would we go when we wanted to visit a department store with higher prices than Walmart but a less stylish ad campaign than Target? But as it turns out Fred Meyer, like Burgerville and Bigfoot, restricts itself to the Pacific Northwest.
Ralphs is more or less the same way – like In-N-Out and dangerously high levels of air pollution, it prefers to remain in Southern California and let the customers come to it. This strategy seems to be working, thanks in part to the single greatest product placement of all time.
"Ralphs - the best grocery store ever! Although that's just, like, my opinion, man."
There’s a Ralphs two blocks away from my apartment, and since my schedule these days mostly consists of waking up, eating, going to work, and coming home, Ralphs is a valuable and necessary component of my rock n’ roll lifestyle. Two weeks ago, for example, I had neglected to do any shopping over the weekend, leaving me with an apartment empty of food and no time between work, sleep, and semi regular bathing to wander through the aisles in search of the necessities.
Delicious, delicious necessities.
Every day that week I would leave the house at 5:45, navigate the treacherous parking lot at Ralphs, and buy something from the deli to eat for my pre-work ‘breakfast’ as well as something from the frozen food aisle for my midnight ‘lunch.’ You know what the saddest thing in the world is? Eating greasy supermarket chicken fingers in the front seat of your Dad’s Subaru and all but praying that they don’t give you a case of the trots in 15 minutes when you’re gridlocked on the 405. (Good news, by the way – they didn’t!)
To be honest, I probably became gossip fodder for the staff that week – swooping in every day at the same time for my deli selection and single frozen dinner. Between my super lonely eating habits and the fact that the only window in my apartment is covered with cardboard and masking tape, I’m pretty sure the people of Studio City will eventually knock down my door with torches and pitchforks, eager to see how many dismembered prostitutes I have in my freezer, only to find me sitting in my boxers watching StarCraft II replays and drinking White Russians, my freezer full of Healthy Choice Café Steamers™ (the least masculine of all frozen dinners).
Ralphs is also home to some of the most spectacular savings I’ve ever encountered. You see, Ralphs is a 24 hour operation, yet they carry a lot of perishable items that due to various state and national laws have to be either sold or thrown out within a few days of being stocked. My roommates have figured out how to abuse this system and will routinely go shopping at around 2:00 AM, and often come home with steaks they bought for less than what I paid for a pound of dry macaroni.
Also, one of my roommates has a subscription to the Omaha Steak of the Month Club, courtesy of his father, so for a while there I woke up every afternoon to the sound and smell of multiple steaks of different cuts being grilled up on all four burners of our gas stove, which, with one notable exception, is a dream come true for me.
Above: The notable exception.
By far the greatest savings at Ralphs, though, can be found in the liquor aisle. To be honest, I visit the liquor aisle every time I go to Ralphs, regardless of whether I’m buying liquor or not. I just like to marvel at the fact that there are some places in America where a man can buy hard alcohol at the same place where he buys his hair gel, and that with his Ralphs Club Card the top shelf alcohol may well be cheaper than the hair gel.
I was pretty burned out two weekends ago, at the end of the week where I had to eat five meals in the Ralphs parking lot, and on my way home from work at 5:00 AM I resolved to swing by Ralphs and pick up a bottle of vodka so I could have a drink to celebrate the end of my week from Hell.*
*The road to Hell, it seems, is paved with greasy chicken fingers. It’s a slippery road that would go better with honey mustard.
Walking into the sparsely populated store as the sun just began to brighten the sky, I made a beeline for the liquor aisle but faltered as I got closer. I had already distinguished myself at this Ralphs as the guy with the sarcastic T-shirts who exclusively buys single servings of chicken fingers and frozen dinners – did I want to cap it off by being the guy who buys a fifth of vodka at dawn?
I’ll just explain to them that I’m on the night shift. I reasoned. Really, this is my Friday night, even though it’s Saturday morning for everyone else. I should be able to march right up to the counter and buy my vodka, no questions asked. This is America, after all.
As I entered the liquor aisle, I found an old Hispanic man in a Ralphs apron stocking the shelves, one of the two employees on duty that morning. I hesitated, as I had expected I would be the only one looking for booze at that hour of the morning. Sensing me there, he turned to look at me and smiled.
“Finding everything okay?” He asked with the gentle voice of a friendly and benevolent Stand and Deliver era Edward James Olmos.
“Yes.” I murmured, backing out of the liquor aisle, unable to further sully my already damaged Ralphs reputation in front of this employee among employees.
Five minutes later, he was at the cash register when I paid for my box of Pop Tarts.
“You got a Ralphs Club Card?” He asked.
I checked my pockets but realized that I’d left mine at home, and the registration paperwork allowing me to give them my phone number hadn’t gone through yet.
“It’s at home.” I said.
“Here.” He ducked under the counter and came up with a Ralphs Club Card, still in its packaging, which he swiped across the scanner for me.
I only got 16 cents worth of savings, but I thanked him all the same. As I left, I was glad I hadn’t tried to buy vodka and earned myself a reputation as a lush. Ralphs is too good of a place to be ashamed to enter.
Truman Capps later found out that it’s against California law to sell alcohol between 2 AM and 6 AM anyway, which would have made the situation far more awkward if he’d tried to buy.