We’re All The Boss ” Here
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by Jeff Collins photography by Ingrid Kuenzel
“It was one aisle, one aisle of groceries in the store. That’s all we could get. We couldn’t even find garlic, My Dad was like, ‘Don’t they have garlic anywhere?’ One aisle covered everything.” Sera Duros laughs. Here we are sitting in the spacious café in The Italian Store at 5140 Skyline Way NE. Her parents, Alberto and Christina Iamartino, opened the original deli, grocery store and wholesaler, as Great West Italian Importers, in 1958. Sera was born the same year. Their first location was purchased by the City of Calgary as it extended Crowchild Trail over the Bow River. The proceeds of the deal allowed Iamartino to purchase a bigger warehouse and storefront in Inglewood, just across the river from the Italian neighbourhood of Bridgeland. Sera literally grew up in the family business. “After school, I would take the bus and go help them do the shelves. They didn’t speak English very well so I even did most of their paperwork. Then, they started selling to Safeway. I remember I would go and fill up the shelves for Safeway because you had to make the stuff look good or they wouldn’t buy it from you. It was a lot of hard work. (But
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I knew) I was always going to be a part of the family business.” Today, Sera is one of four partners who own and operate Great West Italian Importers. Alberto’s younger daughter, Sue, her husband Giovanni Oliverio, and Sera’s husband Mike, make up the rest
You’re not going to come to this country as a 40-year-old labourer and get a law degree! of the management quartet. Together they run Great West as an umbrella company with two divisions: The Italian Store and Scarpone’s Quality Italian Foods. The former is the retail end of this family-owned food business. The latter imports products from all over the world, and packages food under its own Scarpone’s brand name. When Sera was