Terry Farrell
Record staff
Cloves has upgraded to downtown Courtenay.
The tried and true real estate mantra – location, location, location – has already proven itself to Jim Lalic.
Less than a month into his new stead, at 565 England Ave. (right next to the Bank of Montreal), the owner of the popular catering-deli-import foods emporium has already realized a substantial increase in customers.
“We were at our Cliffe Avenue location (1900 block) for three years, and it ran really well there, but the building sold and the new owners wanted in, so I was looking for a spot downtown, and found this,” said the longtime Comox Valley chef and businessman.
He said the benefits of the move were noticed immediately.
“The walk-by traffic is huge. The downtown core is great for that, because people will park and they will walk from shop to shop. The revitalization of downtown Courtenay has been really good. The energy here is so positive. It’s up-beat; people are looking for unique shops, and I think we are pretty unique.”
It took Lalic eight weeks to complete the move, as he had to transform his new locale to fit his business.
“It was a learning experience,” he said. “Renovations are not an easy thing. We went from a bare-bones building to putting in a fully-loaded catering kitchen in the back, and a deli up front – it was a lot of work, but we did it.”
And while the top three words in real estate may be location, location, location, in the retail industry there are two words that are imperative to success: customer service.
Lalic lives by those two words. Since moving to his new location, he has increased his product SKUs by 50 per cent.
“We originally started with about 100 SKUs for products. Now we are at about 150, since I opened the doors here. The customers are the ones who determine what I carry.
“If there’s something you remember from your homeland that you can’t get here, come see me. I want to be able to fulfil that void.”
Lalic’s specialty is Mediterranean flare.
“It’s a one-stop shop (for products) from Turkey, Morocco, Greece, Croatia… Mediterranean and Middle East; southern European.”
Customers can pick up fresh, in-house made hummus, spanikopitas, tzatziki, and baklava.
“We are bringing in certain types of meats from some parts of Italy and Spain,” said Lalic. “I’ve got sausage coming in from Turkey soon, pastas and sauces from Italy, Harissa paste – pepper paste from Israel and Egypt, preserved lemons. Basically, if it’s something you eat that I would not see at a normal grocery store, I buy it.”
Cloves has everything from imported dried pastas, to various different cooking oils, and everything in between. And, of course… mustard?
“Mediterraneans aren’t known for mustard, but you can’t go into a deli without having mustard,” said Lalic. “So we have everything from Dijon mustards to horseradish mustards, mother-in-law hot mustard that will blow your mind, even right down to the beer-mug mustard. We even have mustard in a tube.”
Lalic wants his clients to feel like they’ve found a little bit of home in his shop.
“I had a lady from Turkey in here the other day, and she said she was seeing things she hadn’t seen since she came to Canada. She said ‘Wow, it’s on Vancouver Island,’ and I said, ‘It is now.’ That’s what we are really striving for.”
FMI cloves.ca
