It’s a typical Thursday afternoon at the Turlock Cost Less Food Company store on W. Main Street. Store manager Oscar Avila is in the back overseeing deliveries before he rushes out to the front to meet with me about his upcoming retirement. As we tour the store, Avila stops at least four times to welcome shoppers he knows personally, then he jumps onto the end of a checkout stand to bag up one customer’s items before guiding me into his office for a chat.

It’s apparent that Avila is the heart and soul of the store. But after 48 years in the grocery business, he’s decided to call it quits.

“All good rides come to an end, that's what they say,” laughed Avila.

Avila was only 16-years-old when started working as a janitor at the New Deal Market on Lander Avenue in Turlock in 1976. He worked his way up to bag boy, then cashier and head cashier in his 20-year tenure at New Deal Market. He then moved to Cost Less, where he’s been for the past 28 years.

A lot has changed in the grocery business in the past half century, according to Avila. He’s been through two recessions and multiple technology upgrades over he decades.

“When we first started, we didn’t have scanners. We had 10 key registers with portable scanners. So you had to actually know your produce prices. You had to put it up on the scale and know the price. Now we have barcodes, so everything is on the barcode…I think it was the mid ‘80s, ‘85 or ’86, that's when we switched over to the scanners, and then every five or six years it was switch to the latest model scanners,” he said.

Avila said that while all four of his children — ranging in age from 40s to 18 — have worked at the store over the years, only one son decided to walk in his father’s footsteps.

“My oldest son is actually the assistant grocery manager at the Cost Less in Ceres,” he said. “He’ll carry my legacy. I keep teasing him to break my record of 48 years.”

Avila said what he’s going to miss the most is talking to the customers. He is constantly invited to different events and family gatherings. He recalled being invited to a customer’s 100th birthday celebration and she insisted on having Avila in the family photo, much to his surprise.

“It's been wonderful going knowing the families. I've seen kids grow up, from an infant to a young adult and now they have kids. And then, you know, their kids have kids,” he said.

Another part of the job that is close to Avila’s heart is the many nonprofit organizations he works with every year.

“I have 17 different organizations I work with, and I've been very fortunate that they all have been very loyal to me, coming back every year,” Avila said, noting that he is intentional waiting until the end of December to retire so he can make sure all the nonprofits in town have everything they need for their holiday meals for the community. 

Avila has also made it a point to keep charitable giving in his annual budgets, so when local groups need five turkeys here or a dozen pies there, he can oblige.

While Avila said he has a very long “honey-do” list to complete at home after working so much over the years, a daughter still in high school to support and grandchildren to play with, he does have one trip planned for the new year: “I’m going to Disneyland!”