Ralph's Thriftway was opened on November 29th 1956. It was a replacement store for Ralph Stormans first store built in 1944 in downtown Olympia called Ralph's Food Center.

When Ralph's Thriftway was built it was the state of the art show case for supermarkets. The Daily Olympian called it "A mammoth food emporium" and in fact it was one of the largest stores in the northwest. It hosted such features as a play area for kids, children's clothing, automatic opening doors, a covered area for picking up your groceries and a rotisserie cooking ribs and chicken. The store included two leased departments. "Blue Ribbon Meats" was leased by John Gosk and "Bailey Drugs" was leased by Al Bailey.

In 1977 Bailey Drugs was purchased and Thriftway was expanded to include the entire area. Along with remodernizing the entire store, supermarket "scanning" was installed. Ralph's Thriftway was the first store in the entire region and the 200th store nation wide to install a scanning system. The store installed a state of the art heat reclaim system that greatly reduced the need for electric and gas heating not only saving money but conserving our natural resources.

Today Ralph's is known for its quality products, wide variety, the numerous services it offers and of course it's great employees. Right now plans are underway to update and modernize Ralph's Thriftway again so that we may serve our customers as the premier place to shop well into the next century.