How the Los Feliz Albertsons’ unofficial Instagram blew up

Given its fame, you might assume there was something particularly special about the Los Feliz Albertsons. The humble supermarket’s Instagram page has more than 8,000 engaged followers, many of whom are the hip, creative types typically found doing something cooler than shopping for groceries in Los Feliz — like waiting in a ludicrously long line for a cream top at Maru Coffee, or peacocking at an outside table at Figaro Bistrot.

Celebrities like Kristen Schaal and Karina Longworth are among those who follow the @lfalbertsons account; you’ll find others, like Will Sasso or Aimee Mann, in the likes showing their appreciation. As for the posts, they tend to be memes so swirled with sincerity and irony that they border on postmodern. Consider one from 2022: an image from “The Shining” in which Jack Nicholson is labeled “Albertsons,” the ax going through a door is “Savings & Discounts” and Shelley Duvall, terrified, is the upscale market Erewhon. The caption reads, “‘Heeere’s Albies!’ #groceries.”

In an age of increasingly bizarre corporate social media — a landscape in which MoonPie can go viral for antagonizing Hostess with an immaculately placed “Lol ok” — this could just be a legitimate, strategic attempt by Albertsons to be Very Online. But the Los Feliz Albertsons’ Instagram, despite appearances, isn’t an official page. It’s actually a practical joke that morphed into a meme-based “fan account,” which then transformed into a digital neighborhood hangout of sorts, before recently turning into its own online shop for those “in on the joke.” You got all that?

Creators of the Los Feliz Albertsons meme account on Instagram: Joel Dauten, Amanda Markell, Michael Tapia and Kevin Horst.

(Kit Karzen / For The Times)

“I’ve had people hear about the account and then get really disappointed when they go to the actual grocery store,” said Amanda Markell, one of the administrators of the account. Despite any expectations generated by the memes, it’s an exceedingly normal supermarket — and this is the core of the Los Feliz Albertsons bit: paying satiric tribute to a place normally so mundane as to not even be worth mentioning. Yes, the grocery store may be slightly nicer than the Vons down the street, and its spacious parking lot is far easier to navigate than the one at nearby Trader Joe’s, lord knows. But, really, Albertsons is only notable as the chore-based unifier of this section of town.

“That’s kind of why we made it,” said Joel Dauten, another account admin. “It’s the shared experience that everybody has that nobody really wants to do.”

Joel Dauten

(Kit Karzen / For The Times)

Markell and Dauten were speaking from the de facto headquarters of @lfalbertsons: the sunny back patio of a duplex within a bagel’s throw of the Albertsons itself. Dauten and his roommate, Michael Tapia, live here, and Markell and another admin, Kevin Horst, walked over from their own places nearby for the interview. “That is a standard issue Los Feliz Albertsons’ patio chair,” said Dauten, offering me a seat and a beer stuffed into a Grateful Dead Koozie. “Straight from China to our backyard.”

Until now, the four friends — who originally met as undergrads at Arizona State University in the 2000s — had operated the account in the shadows. In this way, they’ve resembled their more mainstream Los Angeles meme artist counterpart, Americana at Brand Memes, whose admin’s identity is still a mystery. But while the Albertsons crew is only just revealing themselves for the first time, discretion was only really a priority at the very start. That was back in 2017, when Tapia started a Twitter page for the Los Feliz Albertsons in order to prank Dauten into thinking their go-to store had a rather strange social media manager. After Tapia revealed the gag to Dauten, the two just kept posting as the store, with many followers thinking it was legitimate.

Over time, Markell and Horst were brought in, and the jokes became not just about the store but the neighborhood at large, riffed on in the absurdly insular way that only locals could really appreciate: an Oscar-style In Memoriam video for the Los Feliz businesses that closed that year (including the most ridiculous, short-lived ones), a Ye Rustic Inn starter pack, etc.

Amanda Markell

(Kit Karzen / For The Times)

Markell, who works in corporate marketing, was the one to encourage the page’s move to the more visual-friendly Instagram, and Horst, who used to contribute to the Onion, was a natural ringer to develop its comedic voice. Dauten, an actor with improv experience, and Tapia, who’s worked in TV development, anchored the goofball project’s growth with some natural entertainment industry instincts.

To help expand to the right audience, for instance, they would search the Los Feliz geotag on Instagram and, from the account, comment on nearby posts: “There’d be a dog photo,” Horst said, “and we’d be like, ‘Bring them to the store!’” Tapia, who does the account’s surprisingly detailed graphic design, explained that getting momentum with a social media project is “like surfing, man.” “Catching a wave,” he said, “you gotta be there at the right time, you gotta paddle hard, you gotta know when to stand up. It’s complicated.” The group kept catching waves. Before long, what seemed like a significant portion of the 30,000 or so residents of Los Feliz followed the fake Albertsons page.

Sardonic motivations aside, the unofficial Albertsons admins found themselves officially attached to — and offering comment on — the store’s actual movements. There was the controversial addition of self-checkout lanes. The painting of a massive pastel mural on the side of the building. The rumors — still unrealized — of an interior Starbucks. The ongoing mystery of why there’s signage indicating a difference between an option of “Baked Bread” and “Delicious Baked Bread.” The legendary saga of “meat chair,” a wildly expensive single item of patio furniture that was, for a time, regretfully on display in the deli area, hence the name. (Horst believes the approximately $800 item must now be available for a discount at “some Albertsons Outlet.”)

They also grew attached to the staff and began developing a symbiotic relationship. A current manager was unable to speak without corporate approval, and Albertsons’ corporate office didn’t respond to an inquiry for this story. But the store’s previous longtime general manager, Richard Sage, was in contact with the group, according to Markell, and reached out during the pandemic to ask them to post the altered hours. (Which they did in meme form, of course.) When Sage died unexpectedly in 2023, they were crushed. “He was very well respected at the store,” Tapia said, “and in the community. It was really sad.” The @lfalbertsons page made perhaps their first and only serious post to pay tribute.

Michael Tapia

(Kit Karzen / For The Times)

At this point, what started as a throwaway joke has grown into something vaguely earnest — too big to fail and too enmeshed in the neighborhood to be abandoned in good conscience. (“I don’t think there’s a better grocery store page in all of America,” said one follower in the comments. “Maybe the world.”) But the project still exists in some nebulous zone where no one can say what, exactly, it even is. Community service for an increasingly lonely, isolated society? Tongue-in-cheek statement about the corporate smothering we endure as victims of late-stage capitalism? Meme-based performance art? Whatever it is, people really like it — and Instagram definitely isn’t paying anything for the artists’ trouble.

“The more unnecessary work we put into the account, the funnier it is to me,” said Horst. “Like, why are we doing this? The hours that we put into nonsense for this account…”

“And it does take up time,” added Tapia. “Because I do want to do a good job. I do want to put good work into it.”

Tired of lining Instagram owner Mark Zuckerberg’s pockets without any return, Tapia recently spearheaded the work to open an accompanying online shop, the Los Feliz General Store, which sells shirts and knickknacks. (Website tagline: “You’ve liked our memes. Now wear our swag.”) “I think Meta and Twitter are taking bigger bites [of potential creative profit] than Hollywood thinks,” Tapia said, in reference to the rough patch many creators in Los Angeles are currently going through. “For people who used to work in the entertainment industry, we’ve got to figure out a different way to support ourselves, to market ourselves and stay afloat during these weird, lean years.”

Kevin Horst

(Kit Karzen / For The Times)

Albertsons itself may also need to figure out how to stay afloat in the coming years. The whole corporation — which constitutes over 2,200 stores under various names in the country — was recently blocked by a federal judge from merging with fellow behemoth Kroger due to antitrust concerns. Supermarket empires came away from the pandemic years with record profits, but the disastrous Kroger merger attempt does portend some chop in the water. “It would be hilarious if we outlasted Albertsons,” Horst said.

And though it says “fan account” on the Instagram page, there’s also the looming threat that one day Albertsons could attempt to have the unofficial Los Feliz page thrown out with the week-old bread.

“If it were to shut down,” said Horst, unbothered by the thought, “we would be able to do something else.”

“We’d pivot to whatever else makes people laugh,” Markell agreed.

“It’s nice to get some recognition from neighbors in the community,” Tapia said, “but it’s not the reason we do it. I think the reason we do it is because you just need an outlet.”

Tapia added: “Therapy can only go so far.”