Did you shop at New Deal, Richland or other defunct Modesto area grocers? A look back
The Modesto Bee is exploring how grocery chains have come and gone, starting with one that offered 7-cent cans of beans among other goods to 1920s families.
The business has evolved over the past century from corner markets to supermarkets to the massive supercenters of today.
We invite you to share memories of shopping at defunct chains in and near Stanislaus County, and to let us know if we forgot any. You can do it via the survey at the end of this article online, or by email at jholland@modbee.com.
This story is not about single-site grocers but rather those with enough success to merit multiple locations. It also notes many grocery buildings taken over by other chains, where you can shop to this day.
Chains can falter when competitors offer lower prices, wider selection and more convenient access. The earliest evidence we could find of such upstarts was the Piggly Wiggly chain in the 1920s (more on that later).
This sampling of past chains came from Bee archives and other online sources:
New Deal Market: It launched in 1933 with a small store at 14th and D streets in Modesto, named for the anti-Depression effort. At its peak around 1980, the chain had 15 sites in Modesto, Turlock, Oakdale, Manteca, Stockton, Merced and Los Banos. The last New Deal closed in 2005 on Oakdale Road in Modesto. Grocery Outlet now occupies the building, near Scenic Drive.
Sam’s Food City: It began in 1954 with a store in Newman and added sites in Patterson, Modesto, Oakdale, Turlock and Livingston. The chain was down to three stores when it closed in 2013. Dollar General now runs them, on Carver Road in Modesto, Lander Avenue in Turlock and Main Street in Livingston.
Richland Markets: The Pallios family of Ceres started the business with a tiny store on Richland Avenue in 1951. It expanded to a second Ceres site in 1960, to Turlock in 1965, to Modesto in 1985, and to Oakdale in 2001. The chain stood at seven stores in 2005, when some were sold or spun off. The last Richland-branded site closed in 2012 on Whitmore Avenue, now a Dollar General. The Pallios family still owns the Turlock location, rebranded as Village Fresh Market. The Cost Less Food chain acquired the Richland stores on Carpenter Road and Yosemite Boulevard in Modesto. The one at Coffee Road and Orangeburg Avenue is now a Walmart Neighborhood Market. Raley’s owns the Oakdale site.
Other things of note about grocers
Our research found other interesting points about shopping in the area:
Grocery store buildings change owners for reasons other than a chain going out of business. O’Brien’s Market in Roseburg Square used to be a Save Mart, part of a Modesto-born company that’s now among the state’s leaders. Smart & Final occupies former Save Marts on I Street and on Standiford Avenue.
Save Mart’s largest growth spurt was the 2007 purchase of Albertson’s stores in Northern California and Nevada. The buyer put its own name on the 60 or so locations in the San Joaquin Valley. The 72 stores in the Bay Area became Lucky. That also had been the name for 10 other stores in the Valley that Save Mart purchased and rebranded in 1997.
Walmart has become the nation’s largest grocer since its 1962 founding in Arkansas. It arrived in Stanislaus County in 1990, offering many other items besides food. Some newer locations are the especially spacious supercenters, such as on McHenry Avenue in Modesto and Mitchell Road in Ceres. The company also has gone smaller with its Walmart Neighborhood Markets, mostly selling food.
The McHenry supercenter’s earlier users included Save Mart, New Deal and Food 4 Less.
One of the food-focused Walmarts is at Coffee Road and Orangeburg Avenue. Among the previous users were Richland, Rick’s Discount Foods and the long-gone Alpha Beta chain.
Richland also had a store on Coffee at Sylvan Avenue, a building that now is the Stanislaus County Veterans Services Office. Earlier grocers there included Alpha Beta, Richland and the independent Michotti’s Marketplace.
And what about Piggly Wiggly?
Piggly Wiggly launched in Memphis in 1916 and now serves roughly the eastern half of the United States. It had stores in California until selling them in 1928 to Safeway, which remains a major industry player.
A 1927 newspaper ad lists a total of six Piggly Wiggly stores in Modesto, Turlock, Oakdale and Merced. They were small and mostly in or near downtowns, typical of the time. The ad noted “lots of parking space” at the H Street store in Modesto, a sign that the automotive era had arrived.
Piggly Wiggly’s website says the chain pioneered the idea of having each customer roam the aisles, rather than handing a shopping list to a clerk. Some old ways lingered. The ad told readers to bring their own jugs for apple cider vinegar, priced at 19 cents a gallon.
Shoppers paid 7 cents for that can of Campbell’s pork and beans, 31 cents for a sack of Swansdown cake flour, and 11 cents for a can of Pow Wow cleanser. A dime bought three cans of deviled meat, and a pound of bacon sold for 29 cents. If those look like incredible bargains, remember that many workers earned less than a buck an hour back then.
One final question: Just how did Piggly Wiggly get its oddball name? The website says the origin is fuzzy. The best guess is that founder Clarence Saunders was traveling by train when he saw several pigs struggling to get under a fence.
