From technology to treats

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This article was published 27/05/2017 (2518 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Saturday, Ken Loney celebrated the grand re-opening of his independent grocery store, Local Meats & Frozen Treats, which moved from its longtime home on St. Mary’s Road to a newly renovated space at 593B St. Anne’s Rd. during the last week of April.

A few days before the festivities got underway, a man carrying a satellite dish entered the brightly lit shop, which, as the “local” in its name suggests, focuses primarily on ethically sourced, made-in-Manitoba products.

“This is probably going to sound like a stupid question,” he blurted out as he paused to survey a line of standup freezers labelled “beef,” “pork,” “lamb” and “elk,” “but do you fix satellite dishes?”

“Used to, but the Internet is a funny thing,” Loney said, explaining that although he left the electronics repair biz years ago, an outdated online profile still causes people to pop in from time to time with a television or DVD player under their arm, thinking they’ve arrived at K&W TV Service, the name of his old business.

“It’s been a while since I repaired anything, so unfortunately, I can’t help you with your dish,” he informed his visitor. “But if you’re in the mood for a steak, I’ve got some great bison rib-eyes that just arrived.”

 

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Loney, 60, graduated from high school in 1973. After successfully completing a 10-month television repair course at Red River College, he caught on at a repair depot on Marjorie Street, where he worked until he made the decision to move west in 1977.

“Those were the days when TV repair guys were highly sought after, and since we had no ties or anything holding us back, a few of us literally flipped a coin between Calgary and Edmonton and ended up living and working in Edmonton for the next few years,” he says, sporting cuffed-up jeans, a red-and-white polo shirt and a faded grey ball cap stamped Heritage Lane Farms.

In 1983, Loney and his wife Wendy, whom he met in Alberta, were expecting their second child. Because mortgage rates were hovering above 20 per cent at the time, they discussed moving back to Winnipeg, where the price of homes was more affordable.

A few days after Loney mentioned that bit of news to one of his parts suppliers in Winnipeg, he received a call from an electronics retailer in St. Vital.

“The owner of Emile Electronic said he’d heard I might be coming back, and he wanted to know what I was thinking about in terms of pay,” Loney says. “I told him I was making $24,000 in Edmonton, and he said he’d match it, no problem. When I said I probably wouldn’t be able to start until spring because of the move and stuff, he said that didn’t matter, he’d wait.”

In 1985, Loney’s boss offered to sell him the service portion of the operation — an opportunity Loney jumped at immediately; so quickly, in fact, he neglected to discuss the deal with his better half. The father of three boys laughingly recalls coming home one evening and telling Wendy, “Guess what? I bought a business,” and her response being something along the lines of, “You bought a what?”

K&W (for Ken and Wendy) TV Service was busy from the get-go. Loney was able to pay his business loan off within three years, and because he kept outgrowing his surroundings, he moved three times within 10 years, all the while remaining in the same strip mall at 1604 St. Mary’s Rd.

‘When I was a kid growing up in Windsor Park in the early ’60s, my older brother and I used to hike to almost this exact spot and pitch a tent for the night, back when none of these homes or businesses existed’– Ken Loney on his store’s new location

By the early 2000s, however, the TV repair biz wasn’t as lucrative as it had once been. Televisions and DVD players had become “practically disposable,” Loney says, to the point it was almost cheaper to buy a new unit than get an older model tuned up. After three consecutive years of “losing $10,000 a year, with no income whatsoever,” Loney realized he was either going to have to sell his “baby” and work for somebody else or figure out a way to improve his bottom line.

“One weekend about 10 or 11 years ago, Wendy and I went camping with good friends of ours who owned Mom’s Pantry, the fundraising company,” he said. “While I was going on around the campfire about how business sucked and how my store was slowly dying the death, they were telling us how run off their feet they were and how they couldn’t keep up with demand. That was when a little light went on in my brain.”

After revealing his plan to his friends a short while later, they agreed to help convert K&W into a Mom’s Pantry outlet. While he continued working on TVs and turntables in the rear half of the space — “The health inspector didn’t know what to make of it, but we eventually got things figured out,” Loney says with a chuckle — a curtained-off area in the front of the store was stocked with various foodstuffs. (Insert your own TV dinner jokes here.)

About a month into his new venture, Loney was approached by a representative of Bison Spirit Ranch in Oak Lake. The next thing he knew, he was providing bison meat alongside his Mom’s Pantry croissants and cinnamon buns. Soon, a farmer from Stonewall asked Loney if he’d be interested in carrying elk steaks too. By 2011, he had retired his tool box for good and changed the sign on the door to Local Meats & Frozen Treats.

 

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Loney, whose clipped-on name tag reads Grandpa Ken, a nod to his three-year-old granddaughter Clara, is a member of the Manitoba Food Processors Association, a non-profit organization that promotes items generated by Manitobans.

As much as possible, his shelves and freezers are stocked with goods and meat produced in the province; things such as saskatoon perogies from Winkler, Bon Vivant! barbecue sauces from Selkirk, La Cocina tortilla chips from Ste. Anne and tourtières from St. Pierre-Jolys.

“A bit of both,” he says when asked whether he approaches his suppliers or they reach out to him. “Early on, it was primarily me searching around to see was what out there, but now that word has gotten around that this is what we’re committed to, more and more people are coming through the door asking me to carry their stuff, too.”

Loney grins from ear to ear when he remembers the afternoon Colleen Dyck, the brains behind Niverville-based GORP energy bars, “came bouncing” into his old location to tempt him with some free samples.

“She introduced herself and said she had these energy bars she wanted me to try. I stopped her in her tracks and said, ‘I have one question: are they made in Manitoba?’”

When Dyck said yes, Loney instructed her to fetch a few cases from her vehicle, which he would find room for immediately.

She asked him, “Don’t you want to take a bite of one first?” to which he replied, “Heck, you’re selling energy bars, and you come flying into my store like that? That’s as much reason as I need to know they work.”

If you take a moment to glance around Loney’s store, you’ll notice a few remnants from his former career. A weathered Electrohome console stereo is situated to the right of the front door, and a floor model radio, circa 1930, is steps away from the glass service counter where people line up to pay for their honey, jam or chicken fingers.

“This was my dad’s,” he says, running his hand over the radio’s scratched, wood surface. “He passed on 23 years ago, but about 30 years ago he refinished it, and I’ve since rebuilt the inside.”

Loney — whose customers range from young families wanting to avoid chemical-laden food to older folks who’ve had a health scare and are trying to eat healthy to members of the Winnipeg Jets and Winnipeg Blue Bombers — saves the best for last. Telling a customer he’ll back “in a jiffy,” he beckons a scribe to follow him out his locale’s back door and down a 30-metre-long gravel path that leads to the Seine River.

“Get a load of this,” he says, whistling to a pair of ducks sunning their selves on the bank of the river. “When I was a kid growing up in Windsor Park in the early ’60s, my older brother and I used to hike to almost this exact spot and pitch a tent for the night, back when none of these homes or businesses existed.

“It’s kind of amusing how here I am again, and how life goes in circles sometimes.”

David Sanderson writes about Winnipeg-centric businesses and restaurants.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca