A final serving of fruit and veg

The era of the small family-owned town shop sustains yet another blow this week as Ryan's fruit and vegetable store closes in Mitchel Street, Nenagh, on this Saturday, July 30, after trading for almost four decades.

The shop was opened by Peg Ryan in 1984 and her younger daughter, Florence, joined her in the business in 1999, eventually taking over the day-to-day affair when her mother decided to retire a number of years ago.

The flight of customers to super stores on the periphery, the huge commitment involved in operating a small store six days a week and a noticeable drop in custom since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine have all combined to prompt Florence to call it a day.

“We have been very lucky, because we have had very loyal and fantastic customers down through the years,” says Florence, who also thanked part-time staff and the many local restaurant owners who looked to the store for their supplies of fruit and vegetables over the decades.

But when you're running a tiny shop like Florence the commitment is huge as the income is just not sufficient to hire full-time staff to relieve the pressure. “My day starts at 7am getting orders prepared for the restaurants,” reveals Florence. “It sometimes feels like a day's work before I open the shop at all - and that's six days a week.”

Peg, who also is also keen to thank all those who supported the stop, said on-street parking charges and the convenience of the one-stop-shop experience offered by the supermakets militated against small family-owned businesses like theirs.

Peg acknowledges that in an ultra-busy era when “everyone is running and racing”, the comparatively leisurely and time consuming experience of shoppers' offering their custom to multiple small shops in town centres is facing its challenges when set against the convenience of the one-shop experience offered by the multiples.

Florence concurs: “A lot of my customers leave here with a kilo weight of fruit and vegetables.

“That's a heavy load to be hauling to the nearest public car park, and it's not every person that is prepared to do that,” she says.

But closing up is a sad and wrenching process no matter what brave face you try to put on it, despite the promise that the next of life's chapters holds. There has always been a shop here ever since Florence's grandfather Joe Ryan (Plunger) opened his boot store on the site in the 1920s.

GUTTED BY FLAMES

In 1929 Joe, along his wife Florence and their young children, were lucky to escape with their lives when the building was gutted by flames. But for the fact that a baker heading for an early morning shift in Gleeson's Bakery across the road raised the alarm after spotting the smoke, all would surely have perished. One of the little children carried out through the flames to safety that morning was three-year-old Ger, husband of Peg and father to Florence.

Old Joe Ryan eventually gave up the boot business, and later years saw the store operate as amen's drapery, run by a cousin of the family's, Jack Ryan (Plunger).

Subsequently, Bridie Brennan, who later emigrated to the US and became nanny to Bing Crosby's children, opened a boutique there, before moving her women's fashion store to another and more spacious location further down the same street.

PEG OPENS

It was by sheer accident that Peg decided to open her fruit and vegetable store just under four decades ago. The store at the time back in the early 1980s housed a boutique run by Kathleen Kennedy and when she vacated, the option came up to sell.

“Dad put the building on the market but then the recession hit and he could not sell it,” Florence recalls.

Peg suddenly hit on the idea to open her store, a natural move in many ways given that her late husband Ger, a member of the Urban Council and North Tipperary County Council, was already running a well established fruit and vegetable wholesaling business, supplying a wide range of shops and businesses throughout north Tipperary.

“We have been around so long now that we have met all the generations,” notes Florence. “Mam served the older generation in the early years and then I came along and served their children, and today, even some of the grandchildren of the first generation continue as our customers. Everyone has been so fantastic and loyal to us.”

Asked what were now the most popular items sold the the store today, Florence had no hesitation. “Carrots, broccoli and potatoes are still our three main sellers,” she says. For Peg, a generation earlier, the main seller was her “dirty carrots”. The layer of muck, she maintains, sealed in the flavour, customers loved them and they used to like the proverbial hot cakes.

THE FUTURE

Looking to the future Florence plans to take a two-month break to have a rest and dedicate time to closing off the book work associated with the shop. Being a chatty and friendly person with decades of knowledge on serving customers, she is hoping to secure employment in the retail sector, and, in fact, already has a number of job offers which she is considering.

But as for the future of the shop and town centre residence, what's next? There's the option of renting out or selling the ground floor shop. But what of the residential premises overhead where Ger and Peg Ryan lived all their married lives and successfully raised their five children?

As Florence says it is now lying there with its “five empty spacious bedrooms” but with no obvious space to develop a fire escape. It's a similar dilemma facing so many owners of vacant residential spaces located over shops in town centres all over the country. The Ryans say the ‘red tape’ involved in converting the spacious living quarters into a new and modern town centre living space makes it next to impossible to consider such an option, despite the tens of thousands of people seeking homes.

Now there's one for the government to ponder as it grapples with the massive challenges of providing a home for all.