Ingles was founded by Robert P. Ingle in 1963. Today, there are less than 200 Ingles supermarkets across Appalachia, 75 of which are located solely in North Carolina. And I return, every holiday season, to the same aisles of their Tunnel Road location.
I wish every grocery store was set up like Ingles: Starbucks front and center when you walk through the automatic sliding doors, produce to your right, beer freezer on your left, Redbox movie rental and coin counters by the registers, and rotisserie chickens in toasting rotations just beyond that.
I grew up going to Ingles for a family grocery run every Sunday night. My siblings and I would place bets on what we thought the total would be, and whoever was closest bragged about it for as long as the walk from the store to the car happened to be.
When I was growing up, Ingles was the only game in town when it came to purely grocery stores. Then, slowly but surely, an Aldi popped up, then a Harris Teeter, then a Trader Joe’s, a Publix, a Whole Foods. Despite this fierce competition, Ingles has stayed afloat. The urban centers of western North Carolina have only gotten more focused on vegan, organic, whole foods, but thankfully, they have not lost their loyalty to their local chain of supermarkets.
The familiarity is only part of the draw. Like the Ingles tagline reads—“low prices, love the savings”—the grocery store offers competitive costs. Their in-house brand is called Laura Lynn and boasts prices for some items that are an entire dollar cheaper.
I can’t describe the feeling I had when I learned that Laura Lynn was named for Mr. Ingle’s daughter, Laura Lynn. Laura Lynn became a full person to me then, where she used to just be the cheapest option on the shelf. Laura Lynn may not make the tastiest vanilla cookies or roasted red pepper hummus, but I feel better choosing products that bear her name now, for more than just the effect that choice has on my wallet.
All I wanted growing up was to be an Ingles Advantage Card member. Nowadays, I fill up my reusable grocery totes and try not to imagine my total as I stumble blindly around a Jewel-Osco that never seems to be set up the same way twice. It is so comforting to return to a store I could navigate blindfolded.
While I can’t imagine moving back to North Carolina, the land of Ingleses, I can imagine living in a place for long enough that the local grocery stores become as familiar as Ingles. Drifting through the aisles of a Food City or a Go Grocery, feet barely touching the ground, buoyed by the fresh bread smells and the knowledge that the item I’m looking for is right around the corner. I miss Ingles every day I grocery shop, but I am looking forward to staying in one place long enough to create that comfort in a store, to staying long enough to have a new hometown grocery store.
Carlisle Patete (‘22) came to Calvin University from the mountains of North Carolina and graduated with a double major in film & media and creative writing. After brief stints in Los Angeles and Chicago, she now resides in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she enjoys sweet tea on her front porch and identifying every tree and bird she runs into on any hiking trail.
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I’ve always been loyal to Harris Teeter, but there is something about passing by Ingles that transports me back to feeling like I’m back in my youth years.
Choosing a grocery store as a prime example of familiarity wouldn’t be my first choice, but I certainly do appreciate your spin of it. It’s nice to be grounded, have some sort of habitual habitat or process–especially when things feel especially chaotic.