They grew up at the nearly 40-year-old Asian grocery chain in the San Gabriel Valley. Now, siblings Alice and Jonson Chen are overseeing the national expansion of 99 Ranch Market.
Lucas Kwan Peterson revisits Pau Pau, her past and some beloved foods through memories of her favorite market, “Ranch 99.”The first 99 Ranch was opened in 1984 in Westminster by Jonson and Alice’s father, Roger Chen, a Taiwanese immigrant from the western city of Taichung. Headquartered in Buena Park with 58 stores in 11 states, it is now one of the largest Asianchains in America.
Shoppers’ demands have changed over the years, but certain elements at 99 Ranch stores — like the live fish tanks — have stayed the same. 5 Asian ingredients you should be cooking with, according to one of L.A.’s greatest Korean restaurants On the logistics end, the company had to figure out a lot from scratch: how to transport live fish into the store, import food from Asia, and create a network of farms that could grow hard-to-find vegetables like water spinach and bitter melon that their consumers wanted and craved. “Initially it was just [Roger] calling up like random suppliers in Taiwan asking if they would ship to America,” Alice says.
The company’s third location at a Rowland Heights shopping plaza on Nogales Street, which opened in 1989, marked a turning point for the brand. Chan, who visited the supermarket when it first opened and in subsequent years, remembers a progressive increase of Chinese restaurants that popped up in the plaza and the surrounding neighborhood after the grocery store’s opening.
“99 Ranch Market is the gold standard for market research as to where Chinese communities are showing up. And this is not just in California, but all over the country,” says Chan, who keeps a database of Chinese restaurant openings all over the U.S.This week’s recommendations will take you to a Burmese food stall inside an Alhambra market and to the new Howlin’ Ray’s in Pasadena for chicken and waffles.
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