Solvang's El Rancho Marketplace in the Heart of the Santa Ynez Valley

El Rancho Marketplace
Great Food and Wine
Established 1967

El Rancho, at your service

2886 Old Mission Drive, Solvang, CA. 93463 805-688-4300
In the heart of the Valley for 42 years!

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This article, Market Mecca, first appeared in the December 2003 issue of The Santa Ynez Valley Journal, and is reprinted courtesy of Santa Ynez Valley Journal.

Market Mecca
by Eva Van Prooyen

The Heart of the Valley
On one of the Holzheu family’s frequent trips from San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara, they made a regular stop at the Buy Wise Market in Santa Ynez, only to find the windows boarded up. As a boy in Germany, Helmut Holzheu had apprenticed as a sausage-maker ultimately working his way to Master butcher. He moved to the United States with his wife, Doris, in 1954 with the hope of one day opening his own meat shop, and in March 1966 Helmut bought the boarded-up Buy Wise Market renamed it El Rancho Market, and embarked on another journey, this time, to serve and sell gourmet foods to Valley residents. He formed a family partnership with his wife and children making his son a quarter-owner in the store. Today that son, Alfred Holzheu, is El Rancho’s second-generation owner.
Lots of time, product, energy, and money has been donated to the Santa Ynez Valley from the operation of the now hugely successful and popular El Rancho in the intervening years, due to the generosity of the Holzheu family. Today, El Rancho Market, which bills itself as “The Heart Of The Valley,” really is just that. Busy virtually all the time, El Rancho has transformed the area of Mission Drive just off Refugio in the small city of Solvang into the Valley’s version of a sophisticated big city deli/market. Every Valley dweller, at one time or another, comes here.

El Rancho Market located in Solvang

The market has 16,000 square feet of selling space, complete with nine aisles packed with specialty items, a full-service deli and meat counter, a produce department stocked with natural and organic produce, a coffee and espresso bar, and an extensive wine selection
. “I like to eat good food; the store is a reflection of what I like to eat and do,” says
Alfred explaining that when he moved away to attend college in San Francisco, “I got a tastefor lots of different kinds of

“I like to eat good food; the store is a
reflection of what I like to eat and do”
–El Rancho Market owner, Alfred Holzheu

food, and brought them back down here with me – that’s what the store is all about, as well as being natural and healthy.”
   As owner of the market, Alfred says his role is to constantly be on the lookout for new ideas, which also allows him to keep his finger on the pulse of computer technology, a hobby of his.“The nature of the business is super competitive; we have to differentiate ourselves from everybody else that’s out there, and our goal has always been to be whatever the other guys aren’t,” says Alfred.
   High on the list of what sets El Rancho apart are some bells and whistles like the deli, its selection of imported and rare cheeses, the coffee roasted in house, and freshly ground flour. “We have a high-protein organic wheat you can grind fresh in the store. It is phenomenal for cooking. I think we are the only ones on the West Coast that do that; it is really quite good,” says Alfred.
   As for what the holidays hold at El Rancho, Alfred says, “This year we don’t know what to expect because of the strike, we’re really scrambling to try to figure out how much we should order. We are up thirty to forty percent as a result of the strike, and if that holds true through the holidays, its going to be nuts.
   “The holidays are obviously very busy; we have a great baker (Raphael) making pies with everything from scratch, the crust, the fillings – even the cherries are bought fresh and cooked for the filling. We are willing to bring in just about anything people want or need.” Apparently that philosophy carries over throughout the year.
   Alfred grew up in the Valley and lives with his wife Katie and two children Elizabeth and Christopher. “The Valley is absolutely gorgeous,” marvels Alfred who says he gets up every morning “and thank God I live here and not somewhere else; it is a beautiful place to be, a great place to raise kids, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be anyplace else.”