Family grocery has come a Longo way
For 60 years, store chain has introduced trends and learned to keep up with times
Standing on a ladder for a photo at the family’s newest grocery store in Mississauga, Gus Longo can’t resist the urge to tidy the top shelf.
The Toblerone display isn’t quite to his satisfaction.
“It’s a good opportunity to re-merchandise the shelf,” says Longo, 66, stepping down carefully.
Longo has spent a lot of his life on ladders in grocery stores, beginning when he was a child in the family’s first store, founded by three brothers, at 2497 Yonge St., near Castlefield Ave. in 1956.
The original was 1,500 square feet and packed with floor-to-ceiling shelves. Many products could only be reached by ladder.
More than 30 per cent of their business was to the carriage trade — wealthy customers in Forest Hill and North Toronto who were happy to let Longo’s choose the best, freshest produce for them and deliver it. Customers phoned in their orders. The store flourished. “People from the old country, they were very hungry to work. They wanted better lives for themselves,” says Longo.
At a time when big grocery chains seem focused on getting even bigger — Loblaw Cos. Ltd. bought Shopper’s Drug Mart Corp., and Sobeys and Safeway stores are owned by the same giant corporation based in No- va Scotia — Longo’s remains focused on growing enough to keep things interesting without the headache of going public and having to answer to shareholders and hedge fund activists.
The new Longo’s at Applewood Village is the family’s 27th store. Two more are scheduled to open in 2015: a store at Yonge St. and St. Clair Ave., and another in Brampton near Mississauga Rd. and Sandalwood Parkway.
Longo’s brother Joe died in 2008 and Tommy in 2011, but there are now 17 members of the family, including spouses, working full time in the business. The third generation has begun working its way up the company ladder, without it seems, getting into the kind of nasty family arguments that can ruin an empire.
“We all respect each others’ strengths. We respect what everyone brings to the business,” says Rosanne Longo, consumer spokeswoman for the Longo’s Family Charitable Foundation.
Looking around the newest store Gus Longo is amazed — and amused — by how much has changed in nearly 60 years of grocery retailing.
He waves a hand at the back wall of the Applewood Village store, which is filled with bagged salads and chopped fruits and other prepared foods.
There was a time when customers wouldn’t touch bagged grapes or bagged lettuce. They wanted to pick their own. Now they prefer them bagged — it’s more convenient that way, and they don’t have to think about who else touched the grapes. “Now they’re worried about germs,” says Longo.
In the 1950s, most grocery shoppers were stay-at-home moms shopping for their families, and an order for a family of four included three pounds of bacon and three dozen eggs, Longo says. Now they eat yogurt at breakfast. It’s become a “must-have” in the fridge, like milk.
Kale is nothing new to Longo. German and Dutch customers used to buy it, but now everyone buys it and Longo’s is selling hundreds of cases instead of a few bunches at a time.
Rapini, kale and bok choy couldn’t be found in a mainstream grocery store in the 1950s. Avocados were considered exotic and no one had heard of quinoa or couscous.
“For 40 years, it never changed and now it’s changing all the time — the last 10 years the grocery business has changed every week,” says Longo.
Changing times have also seen the rise of the “gourman,” not just men armed with shopping lists drawn up by their wives, but men who love cooking and shopping for food.
“Some of them are taking their time, they’re reading the labels . . . They’ve been on the Internet, they have all kinds of recipes, they’re eager to try new things,” says Longo.
Rob Gerlsbeck, editor of Canadian Grocer, believes Longo’s continues to be successful because it excels at execution. “They’re very good at doing the small things that make a difference. They run their business extremely well, they treat people extremely well.”
Gary Sands, a spokesman for the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers, says: “There is a feeling of family with the employees. They really feel like they are part of the Longo’s clan. I think that is another reason for their success.”