The New Kings of Bridgeland: Two very different young proprietors revive their family businesses and the corner-store market

Jeremy Klaszus, Swerve 


A few years ago, Yousef Traya finally saw his chance to get rid of the sign.

It had bugged him since he was a kid, when he lived atop his family’s corner store at 1104 1st Ave. N.E. in Bridgeland. The marquee on the side of the 1912 brick building advertised the specials of the day, providing endless fodder for wisecracking classmates on the school bus: “Ham is just $1.99 at Yousef’s house!” Now in his mid-30s, Yousef, who comes from a long line of Lebanese grocers, was remaking the family store and decided the sign had to go.

His plan was to create an entirely new corner market, one with a modern, offbeat and distinctly community-oriented feel. He would call it Bridgeland Market, and carefully tailor it to the changing needs of the neighbourhood.

At the opposite end of the same street, Gareth Lukes also disliked the signage at his store, Lukes Drug Mart. Like Yousef, he had recently taken over his family’s business. To Gareth, who comes from a line of pharmacists, the Rexall and IDA logos on the exterior of the building hinted at the predictable experience awaiting customers inside. Drugstores bored Gareth. They were all the same: Aspirin, shampoo, toothpaste. Seen one, seen them all. Gareth, a creative and introspective guy in his 20s, couldn’t take it anymore. He too would reinvent his family’s corner store, but would do it over time, with a series of unpredictable changes to catch customers’ attention.

For half a century, corner stores have struggled to stay afloat amid the Safeways and Shoppers Drug Marts of the world. But in an urban landscape dominated by big-box players, this northeast street is an optimistic anomaly, proof that the independent local merchant still plays a vital community role. Working separately in very different ways, these two young Bridgelanders have figured out how to make the corner store newly relevant — and change their neighbourhood for the better.

Bridgeland Market and Lukes are both holdouts from a bygone era of family stores in the area. In the late 1880s, a wave of ethnic Germans from Russia settled in what is now Bridgeland. Ukrainian, Polish and Italian immigrants followed. Bolstered by the presence of the General Hospital (it has since been demolished), European shops bloomed along First Avenue N.E. in the mid-1900s. The area became known as “Little Italy.”

Yousef’s parents bought a German deli at the east end of the street in 1981. As Lebanese entrepreneurs, Nawaf and Fatima Traya had to adjust to the European makeup of the community. “There were no Middle Eastern people,” said Fatima. “You kind of stuck out.” Germans would come into the store and ask Fatima whether this or that cold cut was any good. Being Muslim, she wasn’t sure because she didn’t eat much of what she was selling. “I didn’t know how to lie,” she recalled with a laugh. “So I’d say, ‘They say it tastes really good.’”

The Trayas soon put their own stamp on the business. They phased out the German goods and started bringing in standard convenience-store fare like Pepsi and McGavin’s bread. They got to know the locals. Still, it was a tough go. Nawaf and Fatima worked long hours, taking out two mortgages to sustain the store and feed their four kids.

In 2004, they rented out the store and started a Middle Eastern restaurant, Tazza, across the street. This is where Fatima currently spends her days, and where I first met the family after moving into the neighbourhood.

After completing a degree in community rehab and disability studies at the University of Calgary, Yousef kept wrapping shawarmas behind the counter at Tazza, working with his mom and dad. He noticed the neighbourhood changing. He was seeing more families, more kids, more young urbanites. He envisioned a new market that would appeal to modern Bridgelanders, with a mix of fine meats, fresh produce and more common fare like macaroni-and-cheese. Underlying everything would be a strong community ethos. Shopping there would be an enjoyable experience, a meaningful point of connection to the neighbourhood.

Community focus or not, Fatima was unhappy when her son announced plans to reboot the family store. “It was a flashback nightmare,” she recalled. “I know how tough it is. I grew up in a grocery store and I worked in a grocery store, but I still don’t wish it on my worst enemy. If tomorrow somebody buys it off him, I’d be the happiest mother.” Nawaf was also hesitant initially but then gave his son advice on how to succeed: Start local traditions. Know your customers. Be the face of your business.

For Yousef, this was already second nature. He remembered names, asked after the kids and gave away baklava on customers’ birthdays. If you lived in Bridgeland, you would see him bombing around in the Tazza van, catering different events. In summertime, you could hardly drive past the restaurant without having him spot you and wave. His brand as a local merchant was already strong. He seemed to be everywhere at once. Everyone knew Yousef.

When he opened the doors in 2011, the locals streamed in under a sparkling tin-tile ceiling, and left with armloads of fresh produce and bread. Now it was a matter of fine-tuning: tweaking the product mix and pricing according to community demand.

“It’s simple economics,” Yousef said. “If this loaf of bread sells every day, that means your customers want this loaf of bread. If this bottle of milk sits on the shelf for seven days and no one touched it, they don’t want it.”

On social media, the market regularly does an “ask Yousef” routine to get insight into what customers want. Yousef thrives on getting feedback and adapting accordingly, bartering with suppliers to keep prices reasonable. “To me, that’s the essence of a market. It’s not this hip, chic place where only a select brand of people can come in. To me, a market is for everybody.”

Which brings us back to the sign on the side of the building. In the end, Yousef got over the childhood jokes of his classmates and kept the sign, and now he’s the one cracking the jokes. The sign is regularly infused with the proprietor’s wit and political snark, and has become the stuff of local legend. Here, for example, is what it said last month during the Olympics:



And a few days later:


From the market’s Instagram feed, I learned that Sam is Olympic luger Sam Edney, who, when he wasn’t screaming down a narrow ice track at more than 100 km/h, worked at the market last year. While Edney was in Sochi, the market sold toques as a fundraiser for him, one of many local causes that Yousef supports.

I got the last tuque for $25.

It says:


Who knew?

At the other end of the street, Gareth Lukes is in many ways Yousef’s opposite. Yousef is beefy and bearded; Gareth is wiry and clean-shaven. Gareth is not the face of his store, and doesn’t want to be. The thought of it makes him uncomfortable. He prefers anonymity. What he really enjoys is quietly watching customers try to make sense of his incarnation of Lukes Drug Mart: tattooed baristas behind a Stumptown coffee counter, shelves of vinyl records toward the front, a post office on the far wall, a pharmacy at the back, groceries downstairs. “Once you come here you remember coming here, because it was sort of strange,” he said. “I like that this is not what you would expect.” Where Yousef is the community-minded pragmatist, Gareth is the curious curator who delights in sharing niche discoveries with others.

In 1951, Gareth’s grandfather, a pharmacist named Jim Lukes, started the shop. This was in the “Little Italy” era; on Fridays the store would often sell more copies of the Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily published in Milan, than the Calgary Herald. Jim supplemented his income by renting out a few other properties. “It was never a very lucrative business,” said Bob Lukes, Jim’s son and Gareth’s father. Bob ran Lukes from 1985 onward, and still works the evening shift as a pharmacist. By the time Bob passed the business on to Gareth five years ago, it appeared the store’s days were numbered.

Gareth has worked full time at Lukes since he was 15. During high school, which he completed by correspondence, he also ran an indie record label and promoted all-ages shows. He is two years into an accounting degree at the U of C, but it’s on the back burner. “It’s hard for me to take a normal business class,” he said. He’d rather take MUSI 301.11, a course on the history of blues. “That sounds way more interesting than some weird supply management class. Business is a bit dry.”

Dry and dull. That’s how he initially saw the store after taking it over. He was putting out the same products in the same spots. Unlike big-box stores like London Drugs, however, Lukes received no money from companies in return for prominently displaying certain items. “Nobody cares if we carry their line,” Gareth said.

This was an opportunity for creative disruption. If it didn’t matter what went where, why keep putting shampoo front and centre? Why not do something interesting instead?

A friend of Gareth’s noted there were no record stores in the area. He suggested that Lukes should try selling vinyl. Gareth made a spot for a couple boxes of LPs in the stationery section next to the post office, thinking nothing much would happen. But people started buying them. This is perplexing, he thought. Why are people buying records next to the post office? “So we just kept doing it, and it kept building and building,” he said. Today, Lukes has one of the best-curated vinyl selections in town, and local artists can sell their records there on a consignment basis.

From Portland he imported Stumptown, a brand revered by coffee connoisseurs. He kept tweaking other elements of the store. As part of an artist-management team, he toured a bit with the Vancouver-based band The Pack A.D. On the road, Gareth took note of interesting products he discovered in various cities, and brought the best ones to Lukes. It seemed to click with customers. “Every time you come in here, there’s something of note,” said Bridgelander David Couroux. “There’s that potential for surprise.”

I’ve heard Lukes described as a good online store that you can walk into, which sounds about right. Inside, customers can find everything from radios by Tivoli, a Boston-based company focused on elegant design, to craft chocolate by Brooklyn’s Mast Brothers (not cheap at $10 a bar, but people buy it). On the personal-care side, there are products such as vegan soaps and creams by Meow Meow Tweet, another Brooklyn outfit that develops its products in small batches “as if they were modern culinary dishes.”

Hallmark, meanwhile, is being evicted from Lukes. It’s too corporate, too standard. “If you’re buying a present for someone, you should buy somethingPor that’s for them,” Gareth said. “I feel it’s really weird whenever you involve a corporation or big company.” Hallmark is being replaced by smaller card companies such as Rifle Paper Co. and the Regional Assembly of Text, a Vancouver-based operation run by artists who incorporate small buttons in their cards.

Lukes isn’t just staying afloat. It’s expanding. A Killarney location opened in 2010, and last month, a pop-up location opened inside an antique novelty shop in Vancouver’s Chinatown to sell Stumptown and the niche products that have been successful in Bridgeland.

At the pharmacy counter, Bob took a break from filling prescriptions for the Drop-In Centre to share his thoughts on his son’s work. “I think it’s tremendous,” he said. “Before, we were just selling everything that all the other stores were selling, and the margins were very low. Now we’re importing a lot of product that you can’t find anywhere else. It’s more like what real retailing is.”

Yousef sometimes jokes that he is living in an episode of Portlandia, the satirical comedy show that pokes fun at hipster culture. Sometimes he is asked, for example, why his avocados or mangos aren’t grown locally. Yet both Bridgeland Market and Lukes clearly benefit from the current obsession with everything local. What both shops are doing is very much in vogue, and that worries Yousef a bit, because he saw his parents struggle through the recession of the ’80s. “Back when my parents and grandparents did their family businesses, it wasn’t a niche, cool, thing,” he said. “It was survival. My lesson is not to squander their legacy.”

He wants support for local merchants to be rooted in community values, rather than the trends of the day. “If people don’t build community—know their neighbour, help other people, support businesses—you will never have a sustainable community,” Yousef said. “To me, that’s what really matters.”

I would love to ask Nawaf Traya for his take on his son’s work. Sadly, Nawaf passed away in December. After he died, the sign on the Bridgeland Market went blank, and stayed that way for a couple weeks, a jarring and oddly poignant sight. The sign’s emptiness was a reminder not just of a family’s loss, but a community’s loss. “Their whole family is invested in the neighbourhood, and so their neighbourhood is invested in them,” said Lindsey Muir, who lives in the area.

I met Muir earlier this month after her seven-year-old daughter, Hali, accosted me in the market. The two of them were set up at a table in the corner, selling $10 raffle tickets to raise money for a mural project at the school up the street. This being 2014, few people were carrying cash, so the market staff was giving cash-back from debit so people could support Hali’s school.

Muir stops in at the market nearly every day for essentials like milk and fruit, and often runs into her neighbours. The market is her community hub. As for Hali, she likes the market’s “cool music” (Yousef is also a vinyl buff) and kid-sized shopping cart. Plus, she often gets a treat from Yousef or one of the staff. And in December, the family ditched its artificial Christmas tree and got a real tree for the first time because Yousef was selling them.

You can’t put a price on these experiences. “Any one of my customers can walk into a store 10 times the size of mine and buy cheap,” Yousef said. “But what do we give them that they can’t get at those places? A sense of belonging.”

In the end, what’s on the shelves at Bridgeland Market and Lukes is almost secondary. What matters are the points of connection. The familiar hello when you walk through the door. The school mural that isn’t yet painted, but will be soon. The deep community roots, alive and still growing. The work of the fathers, renewed by the sons.

