Former Ralphs in Fresno, CA

[Nikki]

Hi! I live near a Food 4 Less in Fresno, California that was originally a Ralphs. It opened in 2001 and was a beautiful store in a new neighborhood. It closed in 2004 and sat vacant until a few months later when a company in Visalia bought it and converted it into a Food 4 Less which opened in 2005.

I was a junior in high school when Ralphs first opened, and it seemed so exciting that the neighborhood was getting this LA-style store. Now I'm a senior in college and I've watched the entire neighborhood change in the space of six years.

I took some cell phone pics of the once-beautiful Ralphs interior that has been painted yellow. Notice the sconces that are still lit. "Hidden" tilework in the bakery and in various areas, as well as crown molding, show that this was once a full-service supermarket.

I hope this fits the posting guidelines. I thought it was interesting.

-Nikki M.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21998142@N03/

[klkla]

Food4Less and Ralphs are both owned by the same company (Kroger). It looks like they just changed the name because they felt the Food4Less format was more appropriate for the neighborhood demographics.

[Daniel]

Actually, in the Fresno market Food 4 Less is not a Kroger operation. Their warehouse operation is FoodsCo there. For some reason, they sold off the former Ralphs instead of converting them to FoodsCo. Great pics, though, so sad to see the once great interior of this store ruined.

[klkla]

Actually, in the Fresno market Food 4 Less is not a Kroger operation. Their warehouse operation is FoodsCo there. For some reason, they sold off the former Ralphs instead of converting them to FoodsCo. Great pics, though, so sad to see the once great interior of this store ruined.

Who owns it? It seems odd that they would have the same logo and basic inteior design of our kroger owned Food4 Less stores here in Southern california if they weren't related.

[Groceteria]

It seems odd that they would have the same logo and basic inteior design of our kroger owned Food4 Less stores here in Southern california if they weren't related.

Food4Less is a franchise operation. Kroger/Ralphs is the franchisee in Southern California. Ralphs (pre-Kroger) used to be a franchisee in Northern California as well, but this ended sometime in the mid-1990s, when all the Ralphs-owned warehouse stores in the north were rebranded as FoodsCo. There are still some Food4Less stores north of Bakersfield (I think that's the dividing line, but I'm not 100% sure) but they are owned by an assortment of operators.

[runchadrun]

Welcome to the board, Nikki. Having to look at that yellow interior at the Fresno store would probably make my eyes bleed.

I found a stub of an article that the Gong family of Visalia, which already owned 6 grocery stores, was opening the Fresno F4L. The liquor license for the store at 8921 N Chestnut Ave belongs to "Gongco Fresno Inc."

The border where Kroger's Food 4 Less stores become FoodsCo is the Tehachapi mountains according to http://www.valleyvoicenewspaper.com/vva ... 192000.htm so the actual border is probably the LA/Kern County line. The first time I went to a FoodsCo, in Bakersfield, I didn't know that they were owned by Kroger but quickly figured it out when I saw the private label items were all Kroger.

[Groceteria]

For the record, there's another butchered former Ralphs on Herndon Avenue in Clovis. It's now a Save-Mart, and has an unflattering hybrid of what has been called Save-Mart's "non-look" and the old Ralphs interior. This one had originally been a particularly beautiful store as well.

[storewanderer]

The Clovis Ralphs was the nicest of their new build stores north of Los Angeles (it was the second one with the first being Stockdale in Bakersfield and the effort level was very high). That store had the standard Ralphs decor as well as some Fred Meyer signs that hung from the ceiling to denote certain general merchandise categories. The signs were similar in style to the signs seen below for sports and automotive but I am not sure if these are exact duplicates. http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa11 ... G_1805.jpg

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