Sisters Rodayna Chkhaidem and Asma Chkhaidem from Fresh Food Shepparton.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
Not many businesses can say their customers opened their store, but Always Fresh Food certainly can.
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After being destroyed by fire and sitting vacant at the corner of Corio and Stewart St, the site required a lot of repairs and building work to open its doors.
When the construction fences came down, people thought they were open for business, and couldn’t wait to get shopping in store.
With customers thinking it was open anyway, owners Asma and Jamal Chkhaidem decided to open their doors officially after repeatedly having to tell people they were closed.
“Every day I was telling hundreds of people, ‘sorry, we're not open’,” Ms Chkhaidem said.
“We’d finished all our renovations, and then it came to stocking the shelves and putting them up.
“In the end we're like, let's chuck the date out of the window and just keep moving forward ... go with it and take it as it comes.
“It was a mess on the first day, but no-one noticed.
“Everyone was just happy and loving it.”
It’s been a year in the making, and the couple decided to begin the venture after doing the weekly grocery shop and realising there were too many stores they needed to visit.
The store stocks a variety of multicultural ingredients.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
“I sent my husband to do my shopping,” Mrs Chkhaidem said.
“He’s like ‘we need a one-stop shop’, and that’s where the idea has come from.
“We've always wanted to open something like this, we just didn't have the guts.
“It’s actually turned out better than what we thought it would be ... it’s gone beyond our expectations at this point, it really has.”
Along with a lot of help from their family, including Ms Chkhaidem’s sister Rodayna, the store has been transformed into a one-stop shop, with a café, fresh food, a variety of multicultural groceries and a juice bar, with a butcher, deli and bakery on the way.
Always Fresh Food barista Hannah Sears.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
Always Fresh Food has a sit down café.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
A juicer at Always Fresh Food.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
Ms Chkhaidem said despite wanting to have everything ready when they opened, they were happy to “rip the band-aid off” and leave some things out so they could open for business now, and finish extra things later.
“We did initially want to open with everything at once ... there was so much we wanted to do,” she said.
“(They’ll) be a work in progress ... there’s still lots of moving parts.”
Having been in Shepparton for 14 years, Ms Chkhaidem said it was a multicultural town that needed a store like this.
“We’re getting told ‘we don’t have to shop in Melbourne anymore’ ... because what we’ve got is groceries that are very limited in this town,” she said.
“Even people that aren't from a cultural background, they're loving it because they want to try everything.
“We’re trying to cater for everybody.”
Wanting to benefit the community in every way they can, Ms Chkhaidem said they wanted to try to help the region as much as possible, and supplying local produce was something that was important for the store.
Always Fresh Food, on the corner of Corio and Stewart Sts, is open from 6am to 10pm seven days a week.
The business is keen to support local growers.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
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