Topline:
99 Ranch Market, the popular Asian grocer, introduced limited edition mini-tote bags at select locations for $2.99.
Sound familiar? Last year, Trader Joe’s limited edition mini-totes went viral, selling out within minutes of their debut.
Read on… to find out why these mini-totes represent a new kind of Asian American sensibility.
When Tiffany Luke saw a video of a limited edition mini-tote bag from her favorite supermarket chain on social media about two weeks ago, her impulse was to gun it to her local store.
"I told my husband … 'We need to get in the car right now because I want to go see if they have the tote bags,’" said Luke, who is Taiwanese American and lives in Irvine.
You'd be forgiven if you thought the bags in question were from Trader Joe's. Those went viral and sold out in minutes last year. Luke already has one of those.
The items she wanted were from 99 Ranch, the ever-expanding chain of Asian supermarkets that have been a staple of Chinese-speaking communities in Southern California for four decades.
Immigrants were once its primary clientele, but if these zeitgeist-y bags are any indication, 99 Ranch is no longer your parents' Tawa Supermarket.
Luke ended up getting six mini-totes at the Irvine store — for her sister and her mom too.
" I shop the most at 99 Ranch Market for my grocery store needs. So it was just really cool to have a little mini tote bag version," she said.
And being the seasoned influencer that she is, Luke quickly posted about her latest acquisitions.
There are many, many Asian supermarkets in SoCal, but for those living in areas where Chinese is a major language — even if you have never set foot inside one — you've probably seen or heard of 99 Ranch Market.
The chain was founded by Roger Chen, a Taiwanese immigrant living in Orange County who got so tired of driving to Chinatown for groceries that he decided to open his own supermarket for a growing population of transplants like him and his family. In 1984, his first store broke ground in Westminster — a precursor to 99 Ranch, or Tawa (大華) in Chinese. Today, the chain has more than 60 stores across the country, according to its Facebook page, with an outsized presence in California.
Wei Li, a professor at Arizona State University whose research focuses on immigrant communities, remembered going to the market's now shuttered Chinatown location as a doctoral student at USC in the 1990s.
"I really loved it," Li said. "Especially in traditional Chinatown, grocery stores are often very tiny and carry some items but not like a huge variety."
But when 99 Ranch opened, she said, "it's all of sudden like, oh my gosh, it's a huge supermarket, similar to mainstream supermarket, but tailored to Chinese Americans and Chinese immigrants."
At the time, Li was doing research on the San Gabriel Valley — which she viewed as a new kind of ethnic suburb that was unlike Chinatowns or enclaves where immigrants traditionally gathered and lived, often in isolation from the rest of society.
Li called these new types of communities, such as Monterey Park, "ethnoburbs" — made up of more skilled, educated and economically mobile newcomers arriving through new U.S. immigration policies since the 1960s.
"They are more outward looking," Li said, adding that these ethnic suburbs are "multi-ethnic, multi-national, multi-lingual and often multi-racial."
Chains such as 99 Ranch are part and parcel of these spaces, launched by this new wave of immigrants catering to those with similar sensibilities seeking a more big tent experience.
As ethnoburbs evolve, so do their homegrown businesses, informed by the post-immigrant generations who are adept at navigating not just across cultures within the U.S., but beyond it.
"Folks who have grown up here in America, been socialized by American institutions, I can definitely see those generations bringing that influence back into these ethnoburb communities," said Samuel Kye, an assistant professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. " It seems like these totes are one example of that."
And some second- and third-generation Asian Americans are opting to stay in or move into these ethnoburbs.
Like Luke, who was born in San Dimas, grew up in Newport Beach, went to college in L.A., then moved to Irvine about six years ago to be closer to her immigrant parents. Occasionally, she travels to Taiwan to see her grandmother.
" Asian culture is a very big thing in Irvine," said Luke, who told her Vietnamese American husband recently that she was grateful to be living in the O.C. city. "We have within a five- to 10-minute drive five Asian supermarkets — like Korean markets, Chinese markets, Japanese markets."
99 Ranch is now run by Chen scions, who grew up watching their dad grow the family business. Their aim — to make 99 Ranch a household name across the country.
One way to do that is to ride the zeitgeist.
"A generation ago, you're mostly depending on word of mouth among ethnic community members to be able to bring audiences to these grocery stores," Washington University’s Kye said.
There are all kinds of mainstream cultural ways to get the word out, precisely because these businesses — as well as their clientele and the people who run them — comfortably straddle so many different worlds, he added.
"It's a combination of second-, third-generation immigrants who are both proud of their ethnic heritage, but also proudly American," Kye said.
The mini-tote, he said, could be thought of as "an item that symbolically represents both of those backgrounds."
Judging by the popularity of these now-sold-out totes, 99 Ranch is onto something.
"Growing up, 99 Ranch Market wasn't as big as it is now," Luke said. "Seeing that it has grown in popularity to the point where people see these tote bags and they get excited about it — makes me happy to see that too."