Lasting ap-peel

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This article was published 23/04/2023 (1192 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last Wednesday was National Banana Day, except when you run an ice cream parlour where some of the most popular flavours of shakes and splits are banana-mango, banana-chocolate, banana-strawberry… even banana-banana, every day is banana day, pretty much.

“We definitely go through our fair share (of bananas),” says Dewinter Xu, owner of the Banana Boat, which is currently celebrating its fifth anniversary — that’s 60 months of sundaes — at 166 Meadowood Dr., directly across the street from St. Vital Centre.

That the Banana Boat, which moved to its current home in 2018 following a decades-long run on Osborne Street, gets its name from a speedy vessel that, over 100 years ago, began transporting the easily spoiled fruit from the tropics to North America is just one tidbit Xu has learned about his biz, since he purchased it in the summer of 2020.

“For me, research is very important, so before buying, I spent a week on the internet, searching for stories about the Banana Boat, how it got its start, what its history is,” Xu says, seated at a table flanked by a two-metre-long inflatable Dole banana.

“From what I was able to tell, a trip to the Banana Boat is a tradition for many Winnipeg families, and it pleases me very much to now feel a part of that tradition.”

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Xu, 52, freely admits he didn’t know a lick about ice cream when he became the Banana Boat’s fourth owner three years ago, mainly because frozen treats weren’t readily available when he was growing up in China, in the 1970s and early ’80s.

“Times have definitely changed, but when I was a young boy, ice cream wasn’t part of our culture. As kids, we were instructed not to eat anything that was below zero degrees… we didn’t even put ice in our water,” he says with a chuckle.

For most of his adult life Xu was involved in the film industry. He was a senior manager with Wanda Cinemas, the largest movie-theatre operation in Asia, for 10 years, before taking a similar position with Huayi Brothers Media, a billion-dollar entertainment conglomerate based in Beijing, where he lived with his wife and daughter.

He isn’t going to lie, he was earning a good salary, he says, speaking loudly enough to be heard over the buzz of a refrigeration unit stocked with 16 flavours of hard ice cream. The problem was, he was spending as many as 200 days a year on the road, for work. Furthermore, even when he was home, his daily commute to and from the office was in the four-hour range, given the exceedingly high levels of traffic in the city of 21 million.

“I enjoyed the job but what I didn’t enjoy was missing all these important moments with our daughter, who’s now 15,” he says. “All I could think of was how, when she was older, she wouldn’t have any memories of her dad being around the house.”

In April 2019 Xu paid a visit to a Winnipeg to see an old friend who had moved here a few years earlier. It was his first trip to Canada and what the seasoned traveller, who has been to 25 countries, immediately noticed was how friendly and welcoming everybody was. He recalls going for walks on his own, and being constantly greeted by strangers wishing him “Good morning,” or to have a nice day. That’s something that never occurred in Beijing, he says, where the pace is “go, go, go.”

“We had already made preliminary plans to move away from Beijing, and the longer I was here, the more I was touched by the city, and the more I started to think it might just be a perfect fit for my family.”

After going through the necessary channels, the Xus arrived in Winnipeg in early 2020, around the same time the first cases of COVID-19 were being reported in North America. They purchased a home in Sage Creek. A few months later, a mutual friend introduced him to Hui Chen, who bought the Banana Boat from its second owner in 2015, and who relocated it to St. Vital in 2018, after the original, 900-square-foot site was razed by the property owner.

Chen told him she was preparing to move to Toronto with her son, and although the Banana Boat wasn’t officially listed yet, it was going to be, any minute. What stuck with him most about that meeting was, despite the fact the 16-seat shop wasn’t welcoming customers inside owing to pandemic-related restrictions, a steady stream of people kept trying the front door, or peeked through the floor-to-ceiling bay window, to determine whether it was open.

“I quickly realized it was a very popular spot, and that people were really missing the place, while it remained closed,” Xu says.

Like he mentioned, Xu performed his due diligence, in order to glean as much much information as he could about the business, before making Chen an offer. He came to understand that the Banana Boat’s first location at 390 Osborne St., a cone’s throw away from Confusion Corner, was originally the home of one of the city’s earliest Dairy Queen outlets, which opened there in the mid-1950s.

He also read that married couple Bill and Diane Reid were the ones responsible for naming it the Banana Boat, when they took over in 1977, and that it was the Reids who came up with the idea for a black-on-white signboard just outside the front door, which, over time, became required reading for Osborne Street commuters. Every morning, they would change the wording on the sign, which parties were able to rent for a nominal fee, to wish a loved one a happy birthday or anniversary, or, in some cases, to propose marriage.

“It’s true I didn’t know much about ice cream, but I did know it’s one of those things that makes people happy,” he says. “In my previous job, I was involved with showing people movies, which also makes them happy, so my thought was, in that way the two are related.”

Finally, under the category, it’s-a-tough-job-but-somebody-has-to-do-it, before signing on the dotted line, Xu, along with his daughter and his daughter’s friend, dropped by Winnipeg ice cream meccas such as the Bridge Drive-In and Sargent Sundae, to sample each one’s wares. While he was there, he picked the brain of owners and managers, asking what they felt their individual strengths were, and what advice they would give to somebody new to the game.

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Nowadays, one of the first things you notice when you step inside the Banana Boat, which was joined by a second location in Sage Creek last September, is a pair of walls adorned with dozens of photographs of cheery-looking customers diving into their favourite frozen treats.

Photography is one of Xu’s hobbies. Not only he did take every last pic with the subjects’ permission, using a camera of his own, he also expertly printed and framed each shot. Lots of people, young and old, choose the Banana Boat for a first date, he says, and all seem to get a kick out of seeing their special moment commemorated, when they return weeks or months later.

Something else immediately evident is a long row of teddy bears, on a shelf above the soft-serve ice cream units. Xu, who shops local as much as possible, and who uses Prairie West Ice Cream, a dairy manufacturer located on Omand’s Creek Boulevard, as one of his suppliers, says the playthings are a nod to his adopted hometown. He was already familiar with Winnie-the-Pooh before his arrival here, and was pleasantly surprised to realize Winnie was short for Winnipeg.

Having established a second location — unlike the Meadowood shop, which closes for a short period in the winter, the new, Sage Creek outlet will be open year-round — Xu is growing used to being asked when he’s going to establish a third, fourth or fifth Banana Boat, in another corner of the city.

While the idea is appeeling, err, appealing, the No. 1 reason he moved to Canada was to be less busy, and to be there for his wife and daughter, more than he had been in the past, he reiterates.

“I built cinemas all over the world, I have that experience, but what I learned was if you become a chain, you sometimes have to compromise, and the quality can be reduced,” he says.

“I’m not in this to get rich, that was never my intention,” he continues. “To me, a good reputation is the most important of all. Ever since I became owner, my goal has been to keep Banana Boat alive in this city forever. That will always be my priority.”

David Sanderson writes about Winnipeg-centric restaurants and businesses.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca