De Luca’s doubles down Old World charm makes way for stylish complex for burgeoning family business By: Martin Cash  Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018

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This article was published 22/08/2018 (2220 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Don’t let the old school charm of De Luca’s Specialty Foods store on Portage Avenue fool you.

The family-owned and run business started by the four De Luca brothers from Calabria, Italy, will mark its 50th anniversary in the city next year.

In addition to an array of Mediterranean specialty foods, including more than 300 varieties of cheese in the deli and a selection of balsamic vinegars and olive oils that can cost as much as a good bottle of whiskey, the modern, sophisticated multimillion-dollar operation has also operated a growing and lucrative importing, wholesale and coffee-roasting business for almost as long as they have been in retail.

This weekend it will officially open a new retail location down the street from the McGillivray Costco and the newest, busiest retail area in the city, that will also consolidate the other businesses from two previous locations all into one.

The 42,000-square-foot building (the family also owns an adjacent 1.5-acre lot for future expansion) will feature a beautiful retail area at the front that will have the kind of deli counter you would expect from the De Lucas and a coffee bar that sets off a showcase of stylish, pricey cappuccino machines, another area of business that De Luca’s has become known for. They were the first company in the country to import Elektra machines from Treviso, Italy.

“We would take customers into the warehouse among boxes and pallets and we’d have to take these beautiful machines out of the box and put on them on a pallet of tomatoes. It’s like a buying a Porsche in a dilapidated warehouse. It did not make sense” – Marco De Luca, on selling espresso machines in the old location

But the family — seven cousins help run the business that employs about 150 people — does not need to become too anxious about the immediate success of a new retail location to justify the millions of dollars of investment in the new building.

That’s because the prime motivator for the expansion was not the retail side. The previous wholesale and coffee businesses locations left them no room to expand the growing speciality Mediterranean foods wholesale business, including about 2,000 different cheeses, the famous Belgian Callebaut chocolate and pickled artichokes and eggplant from Spain and Italy.

“Coffee has become the largest portion of our business,” said Marco De Luca, 45, the nominal head of the company, but the cousins all scoff when asked about their job titles.

The company has been roasting coffee for more than 20 years. It imports beans from all over the world, roasting and packaging them for customers across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Northwest Ontario.

That business had been operating out of a building in Teulon, but Marco said it was tedious to go back and forth to Teulon with raw products and finished coffee for distribution.

As the coffee culture has grown, De Luca’s also grew its espresso and cappuccino machine business, where there is increasing demand for more beautiful machines, both for commercial use and for the home.

“It was getting very difficult,” Marco said regarding the marketing of the machines, with the most expensive commercial models sold to restaurants selling for as much as $20,000. “We would take customers into the warehouse among boxes and pallets and we’d have to take these beautiful machines out of the box and put on them on a pallet of tomatoes. It’s like a buying a Porsche in a dilapidated warehouse. It did not make sense.”

The new location features a separate showroom for the high-end commercial models.

The wholesale business has been operating out of the new location — that has a fancy 2,200-square-foot freezer and cold storage area twice as large — for a year.

The new space also features a 2,000-square-foot commercial kitchen. Retail customers can see chefs making pasta behind a glass window, to achieve its provincial licence so the company can sell its prepared foods across the province.

There are a lot of moving parts to the business.

“It has been an overwhelming experience,” Marco said about the significant expansion to what is still an old-fashioned family business.

But with all the investment and sophisticated systems at the new Oak Bluff location, the Portage Avenue store is not going to change. 

Carla De Luca, who is in charge of catering and the cooking school, said, “Our Portage Avenue store is a busy place and with our growing city, this second location will help more people be able to get to, and enjoy our products.”

That means there will still be the opportunity to have a nice plate of penne and red sauce (you can even have seconds) and a glass of wine on the mezzanine level of the Portage Avenue location and join people you’ve never met at a big round table.

“It’s a big enterprise now, but we’re still a family business,” said Marco.

“We all agreed we needed to expand. Nowadays you either have to expand or you start to lose some of the business you had.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca

Martin Cash
Reporter

Martin Cash has been writing a column and business news at the Free Press since 1989. Over those years he’s written through a number of business cycles and the rise and fall (and rise) in fortunes of many local businesses.

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