V. Traverso Co: Rainbow Stores

V. Traverso Co: Rainbow Stores

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 Luisa 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 Traverso Family has been a part of San Francisco’s history, living in and contributing to “The City by the Bay.” The family provided a place to live, buy food, and enjoy a beer and good conversation; it contributed to three hard-working sons whose sharp business strategies prevented many small, neighborhood grocery stores from succumbing to the Piggy Wigglys and Safeways that came to swallow them up.