Millers are in it together

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/10/2017 (3115 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Shawn Miller and his sister Chelsey Sandberg are third-generation owner/operators of Miller’s Super Valu Meats — commonly known as Miller’s Meats — the neighbourhood meat market and grocery store their grandparents Ken and Cathy Miller founded in 1971 at 590 St. Mary’s Rd.

At the end of an interview the siblings turn to their father, Cam Miller, and ask, almost in unison, “Dad, do you think we should tell him about the mural?”

“Tell me about the what?” the interviewer immediately responds, retrieving the pen and notepad he tucked away in his briefcase seconds earlier.

In 2009, Cam and his wife Sandra commissioned artist Sarah Collard to paint a large-scale mural on the north side of the family’s flagship location. (There are four Miller’s Meats outlets in Winnipeg, including a newly-minted store at 925 Headmaster Row, a bone’s throw away where Lagimodiere Boulevard intersects with the Perimeter Highway.)

At the time, the couple had just returned from a trip to Europe. They asked Collard to incorporate some of what they had seen abroad into her design — an Italian piazza, perhaps, or a French market square. What they didn’t count on, mind you, was a painted figure in one corner of her work that sent a shiver down the Millers’ spines, the first time they saw it.

“There’s a likeness of a shop owner near our back service entrance; he’s wearing a tie and suspenders, is bald and has kind of a half-smirk on his face, and looks exactly — and I mean exactly — like our late great-grandfather,” Shawn says, rolling his eyes. “I remember Dad asking the artist if somebody gave her a picture of him to copy or what, and her saying she didn’t know what he was talking about… that it wasn’t meant to be anybody in particular.”

Equally odd: Two years after the 1,250-square-foot mural was unveiled, a fellow Shawn swears is the doppelganger of another person portrayed on the wall waltzed into Miller’s to apply for a job. “It totally freaked me out,” he says with a laugh. “I was like, this is getting creepier and creepier.” (In case you’re wondering, yes, the person got the position.)

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Cam Miller was five years old when his father, a meat department manager for Loblaw’s, transferred from Winnipeg to Vancouver to accept a similar position with the Canadian supermarket chain. His parents never really warmed up to the west coast, however, so, in 1971, they returned to Winnipeg with the intention of opening an independent butcher shop of their own.

In September of that year they purchased an existing business called Petty’s Meats, which, Cam recalls, was situated almost directly across the street from a car dealership run by Terry Balkan. Cam laughs and says “of course,” when asked if he remembers a series of campy, ’70s-era TV spots featuring Balkan and his trusty sidekick, Brother Lou imploring viewers to “push, pull or drag” their trade-ins, to their St. Vital sales lot.

Establishing a new business can be hard enough, Cam says, but things became even more difficult for his parents when tragedy struck, not long after their grand opening.

“My middle brother, who was only 8, got hit and killed by a car, four months after they got going,” Cam says. “I honestly don’t know how they managed to get through that, because it wasn’t like they could afford to take a few months off or anything to try and recover.”

At age 12, Cam started working for his parents after school and on weekends, sweeping floors and bagging customers’ purchases. He caught on full time after graduating from high school, by which time he had not only learned the ins-and-outs of butchering, but had also met his future bride.

“Mom used to work here when she was a teenager, too,” Chelsey says. “And the way my grandparents told me the story, they used to tell Dad to drive her home every once in a while, to make sure she got there safely.”

“I’m not sure whether that’s the truth or not,” Cam says blushing, “but whatever… it blossomed.”

The Millers faced another challenge in the early 1980s when SuperValu, the predecessor of the Real Canadian Superstore, opened a big box store — one of the first of its kind in Winnipeg — less than a kilometre away from their store. What had once been a bustling staff of 20 dwindled to four at one point, Cam says, as his father was forced to cut costs in order to make ends meet.

“SuperValu was different than anything people in Winnipeg had ever seen and there’s no other way to put it: our sales just went in the tank,” says Cam, who, along with his wife, assumed control of the business in 1991, when his parents retired. “It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, however, because it forced us to reinvent ourselves if we wanted to survive. That was when we started doing all our own sausages, smokies and deli meats and carrying unique (barbecue) sauces and rubs, none of which we’d done prior to (SuperValu). Slowly, surely, customers started coming back.”

“My dad always downplays his role in all of this,” Shawn interjects, “but when times were tough, he rose up and put his own spin on things. He was really invested in making Miller’s work and he completely changed it.”

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Hanging on the wall directly above the St. Mary’s Road store’s cash register is a framed photograph of the Windsor Theatre, a 420-seat movie house that, according to the website www.movie-theatre.org, functioned as a first-run cinema from 1944 to 1976. In 2003, when Cam and Sandra were scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to enlarge their bursting-at-the-seams operation without cutting into their much-needed parking lot, they purchased the building next door, which, after the theatre closed, housed a church and later, an indoor skateboard park.

Chelsey laughs and says, “For sure,” when a visitor to her present-day, second-floor office remarks, “And this must have been the projection room, right?” owing to a cut-out section of wall where one can easily imagine a 35-mm film projector whirring away.

“It’s funny because after we expanded, we had so many people from the neighbourhood drop in, to share their memories about going to movies here, when they were kids,” she says, adding a curator from the nearby St. Vital Museum recently dropped off another set of photos, showing trolley cars stationed in front of the theatre.

“A story I’ve heard from a few people is about this fierce woman who used to rule the roost here, apparently. She’d stand at the back of the theatre and if you dared talk during a movie, she’d yell at you to be quiet or else.”

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Cam says Shawn, 32, and Chelsey, 29, were still too young when he retired six years ago to expect them to take on the stores, themselves. He sold part of the operation to outside interests, but retained a share for his kids, in case they ever decided running a meat market was something they wanted to do with their lives, too.

“For me, there was never a doubt, but I do remember Dad telling us not to feel pressured, to do whatever we wanted as a career, but that the store was here for us, if we wanted it,” Shawn says.

“My parents actually encouraged me to become a teacher — that’s what I studied at university — but after doing some volunteer work in a classroom, I realized I had a passion for the store I didn’t even know existed,” Chelsey pipes in, adding whenever she arrives home with sacks of groceries, the first thing her children, aged two and four, want to know is whether the contents are from “our store.”

Chelsey adds it might sound odd, but one of her favourite childhood memories is spending long, arduous days at the store during peak periods such as Thanksgiving, then piling into the car at 6 p.m. on Saturday and, following a quick pit stop to grab the dog, heading to their cottage for a couple of days of “R and R.”

“During the drive there we were all tired, for sure,” she says. “But because it was the same amount of tired each, it always seemed that we were in this together.”

David Sanderson writes about Winnipeg-centric businesses and restaurants.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca