Wally's Delicatessen has been a landmark in Cardiff city centre since 1981. Now the current owner, Wally's son Steven Salamon, has written a book about his family's story of persecution and escape from Nazi Europe, as well as the founding and evolution of the family store.
This extract is taken from the book, From The Anschluss to the Arcades.
By the time I had worked with Dad for a couple of years, I had grown accustomed to certain facts. One was that while I did all the bookwork and a lot of the buying, and could run the shop smoothly, Dad would never find it easy to take a back seat. He liked to be hands-on, directing staff, changing displays, and being present in the shop. We shared a small office, and Dad was often in there when I needed to be, making me uncomfortably aware that I should get back onto the shop floor if I wanted to please him. Another indisputable fact was that the business would not expand to further sites while Dad was involved. As in many aspects of running the business, my father still held the reins.
Nevertheless, I always felt the need to prove my worth, and despite Dad's reluctance to open in new locations, I found other ways to grow the business. My first significant development was setting up a website and selling online. This was in 2000, during the early years of the internet, when Wally's online presence was strong, often ranking at the top of internet search results for “speciality foods”.
This had the unintended result of making us appear like a larger business than we were. For a couple of years, we supplied Fortnum & Mason in London with German frankfurters, shipping them by post. Fortnum’s discovered us through an online search for suppliers of speciality meats, and I believe they were unaware that we were merely a small independent shopping Cardiff.
Initially, Dad, David and I packed the orders on the shop floor after closing. After a short while, Corrine, who had been working part-time, took on the responsibility of packing the orders. We were so busy with internet orders; we have never done as much of our turnover online as we did in those first few years. As the popularity of online retailing soared over the next two decades, it became increasingly difficult for a small business like ours to find its place online and make its presence felt. Our online business has since declined, bucking the trend, but that has made us even more determined to ensure that our bricks-and-mortar business, the shop is as good as it can be, offering customers an in-person experience that cannot be found online.
I successfully introduced further changes. In 2000, we expanded into the unit next door, which was being used for storage. The space was costly due to its long window run, which is the most expensive floor area for rent and rates. I wanted to expand the shop to sell a broader range of products. We weren't using that space as an overspill shop at Christmas, as my father had done in years gone by. By combining the two units into one, I finally allayed my father's fear expressed 20 years earlier when he surprised Richard Morgan by accepting this reduced-sized unit, that he would not have enough retail space.
Naturally, Dad took it upon himself to fit out the unit for retail purposes. He reused much of the original shelving, installed a new slatted ceiling and wooden floor, and created new window display cases.
However, the change caused a problem, as the shop lost vital storage space, which was already in short supply. We spoke with Richard Morgan, our landlord, who was a proper old-school gentleman, and he provided us with some unused space at the far end of the arcade, above the shops and spanning the arcade. This storage space was more than adequate for our needs, but the issue was that it was up two flights of stairs. With the help of a local engineering firm, Dad ingeniously planned and built a hoist to enable us to lift the goods up and down in a cage. This was typical of Dad; he was always capable of finding ways to solve a problem, and wasn't fazed by it. As I have already made clear, I regret not inheriting his practical skills.
The first product range we introduced in this new sales area was South African foods. During the 1990s, there was a significant influx of South Africans from an Afrikaner background into the UK, following the rise to power of the African National Congress. Around the same time, the NHS recruited nurses and other staff from Southern Africa to bolster their staffing levels. Like other immigrant groups, both these communities sought a taste of home. We had been selling beef biltong (air-dried beef; the name comes from the Afrikaner language, meaning bull's tongue, due to the way it looks when hung up) for some time, but we now began stocking a wider range of goods, including mielie meal (a coarse flour made from maize), a South African staple. We offered such an extensive range of products that customers thought we were a South African shop. However, demands began to dwindle after immigrant South Africans started opening shops around the country, and these goods became increasingly available online.
My next step was to purchase a wholesale business from one of the shop's Greek suppliers. This gave us access to a small wholesale delivery round and, more importantly, introduced us to new suppliers in London. The acquisition added new tasks, such as securing orders and taking a van to London to collect customer goods. The monthly van trip enabled us to call on other suppliers and buy items directly. Once back in Cardiff, customer orders were loaded into my car for delivery around the local area, reaching as far as Barry – a task carried out by me or David.
We brought so many goods back to Cardiff that the van occasionally became overloaded. On one occasion, David and Dad were stopped by the Highways Police on the way back and taken to a goods weighing station. All the goods had to be unloaded onto the tarmac there and then. At about four in the afternoon, I received a call from David while I was in the shop: “Help. We're in trouble,” he said. I urgently had to hire a transit van and drive to meet them to collect the excess stock from the roadside.
On another occasion, David and Tric were stopped. They had to unload the excess stock into a garage repair workshop owned by strangers in Watford and return the next day to collect it. The police charged David, and Dad wrote a letter to get the charge dropped.
Another market we were able to significantly develop for a time was the shop's Polish trade. We had been selling Polish products since the original shop opened on Bridge Street. But after Poland joined the European Union in 2005, there was a massive influx of young Poles into the country, and a few large cash-and-carry wholesalers selling Polish goods opened in London. Seeing the range of products available was mind-blowing, and I realised that the new customers would be buying them for everyday use, not just for a reminder of home.
From The Anschluss to the Arcades is available in store at Wally's, priced £11.99. It is also available from Wally's online at www.wallysdeli.co.uk/hampers-and-gifts/book.html and from Amazon at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anschluss-Arcades-Evolution-Family-Store
