The business of selling fruit, vegetables and staples is a booming trade at the moment, and an unenviable one for Pirlos Fruit Barn owner Suzanne Singh-Dhesi.

Suzanne and her husband Bobby have been working from 6am to 11pm every day this week to keep the shop shelves stacked, after a rush of customer panic buying emptied out the store on Tuesday.

Pirlos shelves re-stocked after crazy panic shopping

Suzanne and her husband Bobby.

In these unusual times, where the threat of coronavirus puts a high-profile spotlight on food retailers, The Lismore App decided to find out more about family-owned local business, Pirlos Fruit Barn, on Union Street, South Lismore.

Suzanne said she and Bobby took over the Pirlos business 21 years ago, when its previous owner, Louis Pirlo, was ready to move on.

“Louis said to my mum, Anne, ‘I’m sick of this, I’ve been here too long’ and ‘tell your useless sons to buy it off me’,” Suzanne laughed. 

“My parents George and Anne Singh were running the Bexhill shop at the time – they bought it in 1992, so it would be a family business and a place for their kids to work when they got older, and they retired to the farm. 

“We were looking for a cool room to expand the business, as my parents had a farm at Caniaba, so when Bobby and I considered buying Pirlos, it started as a joke, but we decided to do it.

Family history in retail

Suzanne said her family been in retail since her grandfather Joalla came out from India at the turn of the century as a very young man. 

“He sold fruit and veg from a horse and cart - and my dad was the only one of the children who stayed with it,” she said.

“Me and my brothers kids picked peas and beans from our parents garden every afternoon, and we did the markets for over 30 years, including at the original Lismore Car Boot, Lennox and Ballina markets. 

“When my grandfather came out to Australia, there were no wives for the men, so they would bring young boys as workers with them. 

“They would work on farms in the area, clearing farmland and making rock walls from Eureka to Federal.

“My grandfather travelled for work and also did sugar cane, turf and bananas in Woolgoolga 

“He was from one of a few families who didn’t dump Lismore and go to Murwillumbah and Woolgoolga - that’s where the Indians bought the Italians out of bananas when they wanted to move on and sold their farms.”

Full time job

Suzanne said working in Pirlos is a full time job, seven days a week. 

“There’s no rest when you have perishables – there’s always bananas to sort and you need to make sure you order ahead and have enough stuff,” she said.

Cheese

Pirlos doesn’t just sell fresh vegetables and fruit – it sells lots of staples and a range of organic foods too. Suzanne has also expanded the range of products in the last 20 years to include a new cheese section. 

“When I introduced the cheese, I was told I was stupid,” she said.  

“Dad used to work at Norco and I’d always loved cheese and ate blue cheese like butter.

“We used to just sell parmesan, romano and salami – then I got goat’s cheese and more - and people were buying it.

Multicultural

“I always knew there was a market out there for the foods we sell – we have lots of Italians, Indians and Chinese people here in our community and they want staples from their countries.  

“People just used to do without, or wait until relatives visited. 

“In 1978, when my parents first took me to India, we brought back lentils, rice and pickles because you couldn’t get it here, but now everyone is eating it.

Coronavirus

Pirlos has made a name for itself as a wholesale business and services the whole region, from Yamba to Alstonville. With recent changes to what’s allowed as far as people gathering together in large numbers goes, Suzanne is also seeing a reduction in wholesale orders from clubs and affected businesses like tourism-based backpacker businesses. 

Suzanne said the local panic buying of food staples she has been seeing is because people are scared about the coronavirus situation, and the uncertainty about the ongoing supplies of food if we have a long period of quarantine. 

“It’s the unknown – this hasn’t happened before,” she said. “They are buying food they can store in the cupboard and that’s why we are running out of pre-packaged foods quickly. 

“People have forgotten how to shop and don’t know how to do cook things – that’s why they chronic buy and the noodles are all gone.

“People need to not rely of pre-made food all the time – that’s what people’s problems are – not thinking outside the box. 

“I’m worried that people have bought so much food that when this is all they over, they will have so much food in their cupboards that they won’t need to go shopping. If they don’t know what to do with the extra food, maybe they can donate it to those that need it.

“Bigger companies have allowed that to happen. I don’t carry foods that Woolworths has – I think outside the box and want things to be different.”

Coronavirus

Balanced diet

“Doctors say don’t eat too much starch, pasta, bread, rice and potato – to have a balanced diet – people will get sick if they don’t have a balanced diet. High sugar and canned stuff and no fresh vegetables will make people sick.”

“In six weeks, time we will have so much fresh produce it will be amazing. The farmers are a little behind because we had so much rain.

Local farmers

“I speak to all my local farmers and suppliers of produce regularly – they are all planting seedlings now rather than two weeks ago when it was wet - and the seedlings would have gotten powdery mildew. 

“Soon we will have cauliflowers, broccoli, potatoes, cabbages, cucumbers, pumpkin, zucchinis - and we have hothouses. We can grow stuff we normally only have in spring like silverbeet and tomatoes.

Suzanne currently employs 12 people in her business and said that when the blueberries growing on the family farm are ready to pick at the end of May and June, they will have lots of work for people.

“We would love to have local people doing it – especially now jobs are harder to come by – and backpackers are not coming into the country so much,” she said.

Social isolation

With an uncertain future, Suzanne worries about the long term effects of social isolation as more people stay at home or switch to working from home.

“Where do we go for social interaction,” she said. 

“Maybe we can get something good out of this situation – it might be that we appreciate each other more. As we stay home, maybe we can learn skills like cooking and teaching children to make bread because we can’t go to the bakery every day. 

“Maybe we can turn off the internet and spend time with crafts, cooking, communicating, cleaning and caring for each other, instead of being busy on phone, working or busy doing nothing.”

The Lismore App wants to remind you to support local businesses at this time. Your patronage keeps the doors open and protects the livelihoods of people in our community.