Three years ago today Tristan and I drove out of Arcata, late in the afternoon of a day that would grow dark by five. We played one more round of bocce at the Christian courts and I lost my sixth game in as many days. A friend of mine mentioned to this me after reading the book, “Andrew, for someone who wrote a book on the sport you sure did lose a lot of games of bocce.” In a sense the book catalogued its author failing horribly at the thing he was documenting. To me, however, it would seem more ludicrous if I dedicated myself to traveling the coast and destroying all of my friends in a rite to which only I knew the silent encoded protocols. [The smell of the beets infiltrated the air of the kitchen. The beets were golden and their insides were a shocking and alien color. The arhythmic chopping of root vegetable flesh on wood and the steady brittle clicking of the wall clock fell in time. - KF] If you’d driven north from Arcata, you’d know the splendor of the scenery, you’d see the elk crossing in Elk, california and the orange highway signs proclaiming “Tune into RADIO ??? AM FOR ELK NEWS,” you’d feel a peculiarly shelled creature on the forest floor scurrying along an asphalt bed beneath the canopy of wizened redwood. You’d break through to the coast at the mouth of the Klamath. And if you’d left when we did, you would see the sun kaleidoscope from the horizon, pink swirling skyward, cold colors speckling the pacific. And you might worry as it got dark and you arrive at the southern outskirts of Crescent City, thinking of the cold, and Pelican Bay, but the city street lights guide you through town and reveal a few blocks away the Crescent City Grocery Outlet.
At this point in my life, I did not believe in Grocery Outlet in the way a Catholic believes in the Eucharist. I had visited and purchased fine products at greatly reduced prices, but I had never joined the congregation’s solemn and blissful cascade toward the carpeted aisles to wait for the blood and the sacred wafer, I had been as a tourist, for whatever reason in Marina, California that day, with a believer. It happened to be Tristan. We found a space in the strip-mall parking lot easily, one close to both entrances; which we chose became arbitrary. And now, here we were again together, in a similar parking lot, his same truck, and he was ushering me into the fold of this distinct store that remained recognizably a Grocery Outlet. Perhaps faith always develops in the process of experiencing something familiar in foreign setting, in the midst of a journey that begins to feel like a pilgrimage. The communion you took at home as a child means nothing until you experience the ritual in a different context, only then do you understand the value of what was taken for granted, enjoyed out of habit.
A little over a year later I found myself in a postman’s kitchen, which doubled as a homespun moonshine lab in Seaside, California. It was large enough of an operation that an explosion was a possibility, but small enough that it would not be catastrophic. The first 120-proof sample had us intent on understanding the process, the jugs, the contraptions, the stovetop volatility. After the second sample, further distilled, an even more intense shock to the senses—all of the senses—had me talking about Grocery Outlet. I had been going on a near weekly basis for kombucha varieties sold at Whole Foods at three times the price, high quality juices that needed to be sold on that day at half the price, bulk commodities and artisan treats, stacked and otherwise arranged, and wine, don’t get me started on the wine.
I believe I argued that Grocery Outlet allowed the consumer to circumvent the usual bullshit involved with shopping, the manipulations of marketing, the subjugations of supply and demand, the visible hand of the middle man telling us what we want, what’s good, concealing a similar supply of product that would skew the presently advantageous demand situation on his end. I told the story of what had developed into a parable in my Grocery Outlet narrative.
A few months back after I had begun habitually frequenting the GO I was beginning my weave through the aisles at the left entrance, hoping to find, I believe, an environmentally sound toothpaste (Tom’s and Burt’s Bees, along with a wide variety of other sustainable bath products, are always on hand), when an announcement began on the sporadically used PA system: an entire shipment of Ben Jerry’s literally “missed the boat to Europe” and GO customers were there to reap the rewards. I turned immediately to the nearest freezer display where I knew to find artisan pints, sometimes coconut-based, usually an unexpected Haägen-Dazs flavor, and indeed there were three not bizarre varieties of Ben and Jerry’s.
“Hold on a minute,” the postman interrupted, loudly, adamant that I had gone too far. “You had me in your story until you said there were three kinds. I go to Grocery Outlet and there may be one kind of Ben and Jerry’s, I’ll give you two under such exceptional circumstances as you are describing, which, themselves sound like bullshit. Missing a boat to Europe? Do we really ship Ben and Jerry’s by the boatload to Europe? And why couldn’t the boat have just waited for the ice cream?”
I had to admit it sounded a bit mythological, the kind of story a GO consumer would hear and think, I’m really lucky to be here in this store, encountering these miraculous deals. Really I’m lucky to be such a savvy customer. The world is lucky to have someone as savvy as myself. I objected, “even if there were only two varieties—and I swear to you that I remember three, however implausible that may seem—aren’t I allowed in my story to say three due to the passage of time and conventions of storytelling? And isn’t two sufficient? These pints were two dollars. Is that not proof enough? This company does not make any flavor that is not mind-blowingly delicious.”
The postman was not buying any of this. In spite of this, I came to the conclusion out loud that I would write about my devotion to Grocery Outlet in relation to the unexpected Crescent City pilgrimage, it would find it’s way into the book, there was a relationship after all—supplanting the unseen forces of capitalist America in our day-to-day life with the unexpected fruits of chance, following instincts and abstract truths over convention, expectation, the mainstream media. You can imagine the breadth of news I had to catch up with January 21st when I returned home almost three years ago, what had passed in Tahrir Square, a big box store parking lot in Tucson, Arizona, the ripples that passed through all the little worlds of which ours is composed. My trip and Grocery Outlet had nothing to do with this, it is a marketplace as devoid of newspapers as our journey. The store is a game outside of the rules of traditional grocery shopping. Your cashier and your receipt tell you how much you saved and, by my account, you win when that number is greater than that which you spent. On a mythic day a decade ago wine.com went out of business, and the suited affluent of Piedmont descended to meet the low-income denizens of Oakland to partake of an indescribable selection of region, variety and vintage, appearing as if by magic at the price of high-end water at Whole Foods. On the occasion of the opening of a store in San Diego part of the story is told:
Some items on shelves are approaching their suggested sell-by date. Other foods end up at the store because of packaging changes. For example, some cereal brands had a special pink box for breast-cancer awareness month last October. In other cases, unpopular items are discontinued, such as mint-chocolate flavored soy milk that was briefly available at the National City store. That’s part of the fun of shopping at Grocery Outlet, Porter said.
Could these stores, “independently operated by locally-based married couples,” to quote another telling of the story, solve the problem of distribution? Could I partner with Grocery Outlet, Inc. in the creation of a GO-distributed publishing company, one with local authors who follow its maverick, no-bullshit ethos. Cut out the middle man. Just listen to this origin story, the trope repeated, how can this coast be tied together, under what pretense can the western states be whole?
Thirty years ago, California grocer Jim Read, on a trip to Central Oregon, cut a deal with new-found fishing buddy Leonard Downs. The terms--jotted down on a napkin—called for Read to consign discounted canned goods to Downs, who would sell them to the public from his Redmond storefront. The deal proved profitable for both men, and Read gradually exited his Bay area grocery store interests, favoring the consignment strategy he had struck with Downs. Read's new business, originally called Canned Foods Inc., has since evolved into Grocery Outlet, Inc. a 118-store discount grocery company headquartered in Berkeley, Calif. Now generating annual revenue of $500 million, GOI continues to rely on the consignment model, procuring inventory on the cheap from manufacturers and shipping it to independent operators who run their own stores.
If your book were a Grocery Outlet, which Grocery Outlet would it be?
It would be the as of yet unopened Oakhurst, a scheduled renovation of a bowling alley “built for youngsters of the community to have a safe place to go and for the seniors for much needed exercise and fellowship.”
According to Steve Kuljis, president of Sierra Lanes, Inc., current plans are to close the bowling alley immediately after Yosemite High School's June 7 Sober Grad party. Renovation will begin soon after the closing and Kuljis plans to have the new bowling alley open by the fall of 2014. The opening will be dependent on current negotiations for the site and finding an operator for the bowling alley.
"This move will enable us to relocate the bowling alley and bring it up to the standards our bowlers deserve," Kuljis said. "The bowling alley is the heartbeat of the community and the community deserves a better facility with better scoring equipment and a nice restaurant."
But this is not the first bowling alley to become a Grocery Outlet. A similar conversion was done in Renton outside of Seattle two years ago. Could your book not be this Grocery Outlet?
No because the book is not finished. We wait for Yosemite High School’s June 7 Sober Grad party. We wait for that perfect day when the sun shines—not even necessarily—and we play bocce and we shop at Grocery Outlet. Let the postman think what he will. As of January 12, 2014 THEIR SHOPPERS HAVE SAVED $87,739,263.67.
Last year today and the year before I was in Arcata, California, six miles from the Commercial Street Grocery Outlet in Eureka.
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