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…