In 2014, the Egyptian government launched a package of reforms that transformed the Food subsidy system (FSS). These were promoted as a way to improve the system’s efficiency and implement more equitable social policies. To achieve these objectives, marketization measures were implemented within the FSS. Focusing on the ration- card component of the new FSS (tamwîn), this article investigates whether, despite apparent efforts to reinvigorate it, the Egyptian FSS is undergoing ruination, which is defined as the political and economic process that devalues the system’s network of actors, labors, and relationships. The FSS is the locus of valuation struggles between actors with opposing social visions for the system, namely marketization as economic efficiency versus food provision as social solidarity. In this article, ration shops pro- vide a critical vantage point for examining these valuation struggles. I argue that these shops are experiencing ruination owing to a push towards market efficiency, which has transformed the system’s supply chains. However, they also stand out as places where the welfare state’s arena of value is reclaimed through informal interpersonal arrangements between ration shop operators and citizens. One such informal practice is tabdîl (“substitution”), which exemplifies how, in the face of market efficiency pressures, the value of social solidarity within the FSS is restored.