Giovanni Battista Ratto was born in the province of Alessandria, in 1868. at the age of 13, inflamed with the spirit of emigration, he sailed as a cabin boy on a four masted schooner; destination: Buenos Aires.
He received his his first inspiration about South America from his sister Virginia. For several years, she’d been living there with her husband, a cattleman named croce. With the help of the Croces, Giovanni became a Gaucho..
A popular word of that period which seemed to fit the energetic and restless young Ratto was Argonaut, meaning, “adventurer engaged in a quest.” Most likely his quest was entrepreneurial and perhaps that’s why the Bay area appealed to him.
Soon after arriving in Northern California he had another stroke of good luck—he met a prominent produce farmer farmer named Garbarino who gave him a job. One of Ratto’s chief responsibilities was to cater to the produce needs of the most luxurious restaurants and hotels in pre-quake san Francisco.
During that period, he married Rose Garbarino, the boss’beautiful daughter: eventually they had four daughters and a son.
Still searching for his nche, the always enthusiastic Giovanni took a very positive interest in the East Side of the Bay. Documents on file at the Oakland Museum sho that he was one of the founders of the Colombo Bakery. After running that businessfor seven years, he decided on a new venture: he’dbuy and operate a retail food store on lower Washinton Street.
Because the area was loaded with run –of-the-mill grocery stores, Giovanni decided to feature imported foodstuffs; in other wordright from the opening day of his enterprise, Ratto’s became an international grocery, a one-stop store to satisfy the craving for Old World cuisines.
Today, this unique International Grocery is widely accepted as a bustling memorial to its founder, Giovanni Battista Ratto, an Italian immigrant who initiated some truly enduring principles in customer-relations. How else could the store, still run by his descendants, have thrived through revolutions in the retail marketing, several recessions, a major depression, a four-alarm fire in 1974, a 7.1 1989 earthquake.
