Continuing on with our Dog Days of Summer Series (a title I just made up)…today we reminisce about the storied old Food Giant that operated where the Wallingford QFC is currently located. Someone posted a couple of old black and white pics of the previous incarnation over on Facebook, which led me to think back on the dingy but beloved Food Giant grocery store that served most of the neighborhood (and I say “most”, because remember? We used to have a dingy old Safeway store in lower Wallingford on Stone Way across from the 7-11).
In 1996, the Seattle Times writer Linda Keene opened an article about the impending closing of the Food Giant with this:
Passions are running high in Wallingford – well, not quite as high as the glittering Food Giant sign in the heart of the neighborhood. The impending loss of that landmark has upset a lot of otherwise mild-mannered men and women.
Besides the novelty of the fact that Wallingford was apparently once populated by mild-mannered men and women, and one of the few times you will see the adjective “dorky” used in a major media report, the article relates some of the quirky reasons why Food Giant was such an institution in the neighborhood. However, Food Giant was only one of a long line of food markets that have inhabited the location over many years. Jean Sherrard of Seattle Now & Then has written a terrific history that provides a window into that past.
My own recollection of Food Giant includes the bright but yellow-hued incandescent lighting throughout that contributed a “Grandma’s kitchen at 10:00 at night after you’ve been out for a few beers” vibe to the place; sad produce that made do in a pinch when you really needed it for dinner or a Thanksgiving recipe; the unexpected and rather astonishing imported beer cove hidden in the far corner of the store; and the lottery ticket window where we all used to line up for those big (but way less than a billion dollar) pots. QFC retained that latter little portal into dreams of easy money, but now it remains as an unused vestigial appendage of a past life for the store.
We all had our own nicknames for the place. Linda Keene, the Times writer, called it “Food Midget”; in my family, we called it “Food Huge”.
There were apparently three other Food Giants in the city back in the day. The owner of the franchise, Randal West, decided in 1996 that it was time to get out of the grocery business. As we now know, he found a willing buyer for the site in QFC (QFC itself would be purchased by Fred Meyer in 1997, before Kroger gobbled up that whole ecosystem in 1998). And after a lot of angst about the fate for the original Food Giant sign that had served as a lighthouse beacon for regular shoppers and drunks alike, QFC happily recycled letters into the current “Wallingford” sign that continues to guide new generations of shoppers and drunks alike.
Food Giant will live on in the memories of the thinning ranks of old Wallingford residents, in movies like Singles and Sleepless in Seattle…and in artifacts like the old plastic shopping bag below that continues to haunt my belongings because I can’t bring myself to chuck it (I’m holding it for the Smithsonian).
If I remember the ‘keep the Food Giant sign’ situation clearly (and I may not, but when has that stopped anyone on this site?), QFC could not recycle any of the actual Food Giant letters, but they did recycle the idea very nicely.
I have fond memories of the Food Giant (not quite as awful as described in this article?). But I definitely remember that there was never a time when all the letters were lit up – the sign usually said something like “FOO ANT”. To be more authentic, QFC’s assign should say something more like “W LLI GFO D”!
And, gosh, it looks so tiny without the second floor!
I was just in QFC– all organic food will now be downstairs- all cleaning products upstairs. In the move several of organic food were not easily located. I am glad othave the organic food downstairs but hope they keep it- the frozen foods; organic crackers and cookies, soups etc
The produce was fine, the way I remember it. Sure better than the Safeway at 40th and Stone, including the personnel in that assessment. The beer selection was far ahead of its time. The thing I remember as kind of odd was a selection of ingredients that kind of looked like they were supplying a Mexican restaurant – 50 lbs of masa harina, tubs of real lard. I formed an attachment to that store in the ’70s on my first day in a Seattle apartment, a ragged kid with a cart load of stuff and a check, and they treated me like family, and after that it was my grocery store to the end. Since then I’ve been to the cash register at QFC twice.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9de59f2f409e38e57b0d25e4af0ea19844b498c2eea1b6769a20fc59940df5fd.jpg
Photo probably taken in final days.
something disastrous happened last eve about dusk in front of QFC– there is a photo of blood spatter directly in front of main entrance.. has anyone info on this?
Somebody on Nextdoor said a security guard was stabbed by a shoplifter. I hadn’t seen a confirmation