De Luca building something special

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This article was published 23/08/2017 (2964 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mediterranean-food and roasted-coffee lovers in southwest Winnipeg will soon have something new to celebrate — the opening of a De Luca’s Specialty Foods store in their end of the city.

The new retail outlet, which is expected to open in late October, will be on the main floor of a new warehouse/production/distribution centre the De Luca family’s wholesale division — De Luca Brothers Foods International — recently opened in the South Landing Business Park off McGillivray Boulevard.

It will be the De Luca family’s second retail outlet in the city. The original, which has been in operation since 1968, is located at 950 Portage Ave. In addition to a full-service deli, the Portage Avenue location also has a restaurant and cooking school.

Marco De Luca, who oversees the wholesale division, and his cousin, Vince De Luca, who oversees the Portage Avenue operation, said the new 8,000-square-foot retail outlet will sell a variety of Mediterranean food products, which the company either makes itself or imports from Europe. That includes pastas, cheeses, meats, olive oils, balsamic vinegars, tomatoes and roasted peppers.

It will also sell some of the same prepared foods as the Portage Avenue store — things like lasagne, cannelloni, manicotti and pizza dough — and the roasted coffees and coffee machines the company used to sell at a small retail outlet in its former warehouse/distribution centre at 195 McPhillips St.

“We had a lot of customers on the south side of the city who were looking forward to having another outlet to take advantage of some of the food products we both bring in and produce,” Marco De Luca said.

He balked at calling the new outlet a grocery store.

“I guess we call this a retail outlet. It doesn’t have a full-service deli. Things could change, but right now it’s (going to be) more of an outlet location where they can pick up a lot of the same products they have on Portage Avenue.”

He also noted the new outlet won’t have restaurant or a cooking studio. But he and Vince said the plans for the new outlet remain a work in progress, and may change after it has been in operation for a while.

“It’s going to be a learning process,” Vince said. “We’ll see how things go and how the general public responds.”

The new 38,000-sq.-ft. warehouse/production/distribution centre opened at the beginning of this month, and is located in the Rural Municipality of MacDonald. In addition to the retail outlet, it also houses the company’s wholesale division operations, which used be on McPhillips Street, and its coffee-roasting operation, which for the last 13 years had operated out of a company-owned building in Teulon.

Marco De Luca said the wholesale division needed a new facility because it had outgrown the 12,000-sq.-ft. one on McPhillips Street. That building had been its home for about the last 25 years.

He said the Teulon coffee-roasting operation also had grown to the point where it was no longer practical to keep hauling product, as well as the plant’s four employees, back and forth every day from Winnipeg.

“The Town of Teulon was fantastic to us… but it became too cumbersome as we continued to grow.”

He said the new facility will also have a commercial kitchen, freezer and cold-storage areas that are bigger than the ones at the Portage Avenue location. That extra capacity will enable the company to boost production levels and offer a broader range of products, he added.

The wholesale division, which has a staff of 17, sells and distributes De Luca Brand and imported food products to independent grocery stores throughout Western Canada and the U.S. Midwest. It also sells products to local restaurants, hotels and country clubs.

Marco De Luca said the company plans to either sell or lease out the McPhillips Street building and the 10,000-sq.-ft. plant in Teulon.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca