Shopping at Giant Foods
eBook - PDF
Available until 23 Dec |Learn more

Shopping at Giant Foods

Chinese American Supermarkets in Northern California

  1. 208 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
Available until 23 Dec |Learn more

Shopping at Giant Foods

Chinese American Supermarkets in Northern California

About this book

From the 1930s through the 1970s, Chinese American owned supermarkets located outside of Chinatown, catering to a non-Chinese clientele, and featuring mainstream American foods and other products and services rose to prominence and phenomenal success in Northern California, only to decline as union regulations and competition from national chains made their operation unprofitable. Alfred Yee's study of this trajectory is an insider's view of a fascinating era in Asian American immigration and entrepreneurship. Drawing on oral interviews with individuals who worked in the business during its peak and decline, he presents an accessible history that illustrates how this once-thriving business fostered the social and economic integration of Chinese Americans into life in the United States. Yee demonstrates how Chinese American supermarkets were able to sell American groceries at reduced prices by using the cheap labor of family members and Chinese immigrants whose entry to the United States had been sponsored by their employers. This type of symbiotic relationship was eventually undermined by labor unions' demands that employees be covered by labor laws and fully compensated for all hours worked. Also contributing to the ultimate demise of Chinese American supermarkets were increasing costs of capitalization and operation, the dominance of national chain stores, and difficulties arising from traditional Chinese methods of business management.

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Yes, you can access Shopping at Giant Foods by Alfred Yee in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Preface
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. Introduction
  5. 1 / Supermarkets
  6. 2 / Community, Employment, and Enterprise
  7. 3 / Beginnings
  8. 4 / Golden Times
  9. 5 / Decline and Passing
  10. 6 / Employees and Salesmen
  11. 7 / Chinese Management and Labor Unions
  12. 8 / Stop-N-Shop
  13. Conclusion
  14. Appendix
  15. Notes
  16. Bibliography
  17. Index