July 1928
The Examiner Retailer
San Francisco
Grocers Edition

WHOLESALE GROCERY FIRM ESTABLISHES BUYING CLUB

Rainbow Stores, Newly Organized S. F. Buying Body, to Begin Operation in Few Days

Expansion Throughout East Bay, Northern and Central California Planned by Backers V. Traverso Co.

Now Has 150 Stores Under Colors

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The
Traverso
Brothers

The Traverso family had first entered the food business in 1902, when Victor (Vittorio) Traverso, Sr., opened a grocery store in North Beach, San Francisco’s Italian neighborhood.

Over the next twenty years, however, chain stores transformed the grocery business. In the chain store system, a central organization operated stores that offered the same products – usually national brands like Armour meats or Schilling spices – at standardized and significantly lower prices than independent grocers (usually around 10 percent lower). Chain stores also displayed those products in almost identical fashion at every store, so a consumer could enter any Safeway, for example, which was founded in southern California in 1914, and know exactly what s/he could find and where in the store it was located.

A common defense against the incursion of chain stores can be found in the example of the Traverso brothers. Founded in 1922, V. Traverso Co. was the first communal grocer in San Francisco. It operated under the insignia Rainbow Stores (not related to the Rainbow Grocery now existing in San Francisco). Individual grocers remained independently owned, but membership in Rainbow Stores guaranteed access to national brands at discounted prices.

Within six years, 150 Rainbow Stores operated in San Francisco alone. By 1928 V. Traverso Co.’s headquarters and warehouse had also relocated from a small storefront on Washington Street, just outside North Beach, to a larger space on Pacific Avenue that was strategically located next to Libby, McNeill & Libby and Swift & Co. facilities, and across the street from the Colombo vegetable market. In 1944, V. Traverso Co. upgraded again, this time to 1050 Battery Street and again marking the company’s continued growth in the local grocery market. The membership of record grew to 381 independent grocers from Watsonville to Larkspur.

Draft National Registration Form


Book Cover

This history of the Vittorio Traverso Family played out in San Francisco, California over 136 years and is written with pride for a family who always put its members before everything. Vittorio Traverso and Lusia Bacigalupi migrated separately from Italy in the late 1800s. They met while living in the same Telegraph Hill neighborhood, married, and with their three sons built the first member-only wholesale grocery in San Francisco supporting nearly 400 small Bay Area grocers. They started out owning and operating the Telegraph Hill Hotel—a saloon, boarding house, and retail grocery.

The companion book, written by John Traverso's grand-daughter, Lou Thompson and published in November 2024, is available through Amazon.com.