10 Years On

Ten years ago, I wasn’t sleeping very well. I had just opened Sanagan’s Meat Locker to little fanfare, and I wasn’t sure how well I was doing. The customers were coming in, but I had no idea how to operate a business to make sure I didn’t lose any money. My focus was simply on taking care of my customers and making sure the quality of the product was high. I didn’t think about my prices enough (as it turns out, they were too low), or what kind of people I should be hiring (friends would have to do), or how to file WSIB (which I did a year later). There were many, many things I knew little about, and the thought of what I didn’t know weighed on me. Also, my days started at 7:30 am and I worked until 8 at night, six days a week (I saved the seventh day for banking). So, I wasn’t sleeping very well. Life was going full tilt and I was just trying to hang on, making decisions on the fly that would affect how well the business did that day, that week, or that month. I was scared shitless and didn’t have many people to turn to, and my pride and ego prevented me from asking for help anyways. But, funnily enough, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It was a wild time in my life, and the life of the shop. I learned how to run a business, and I did it because of my customers, my staff, and my partner. My pride and ego may have prevented me from asking for help, but I got it anyways, and for that I am forever grateful. Anniversaries are a time for reflection, and I was encouraged (by Claire – Store Manager and long time all star) to format my reflections in a list. Some memories are of difficult times, and some are of funny times. I tend not to remember the “great” times, as I have a weird complex that doesn’t allow me to be satisfied in any achievement for too long. I find the stressful times make for the best stories anyways. So, without further ado, here is a list of a random assortment of memories, in no particular order. 1) The time that the gravity coil on the ceiling of the walk-in refrigerator fell down, overwhelmed by the amount of ice that had built up on the coils. I came into work one morning, opened the walk-in door, and was greeted by too-warm air. The cooling unit had actually fallen right out of the ceiling and landed on a stack of boxes. I lost a bunch of products because the temperatures were too high. That really sucked. 2) That Saturday when I was renovating the larger store before moving in, and overnight some graffiti “artist” bombed the entire front of the store with some garbage tag. I spent the whole day on my hands and knees, cleaning the windows and frames with nail polish remover and a razor blade. I met a lot of people that day, all commenting on “why bother – it’ll just happen again”. It has, but none were that bad. 3) The time when our giant walk-in cooler broke down three days before Christmas, and Alia, Brian, and I had to hand-bomb the entire contents of the fridge down a flight of stairs (at 11pm) to the back-up cooler, which wasn’t big enough but we managed to make it work for the evening while the main fridge was repaired. Did I mention this happened three days before Christmas? Yeah. 4) The time I was at my in-laws for a holiday Monday while the store was closed and I decided that “for once, I’m going to leave my phone in the bedroom while I unplug and go outside”. I forgot that I had a repairman at the shop, who was taking advantage of the fact that the store was closed and no one was there to do some fridge repairs. What he forgot was that the latch on the walk-in cooler door was broken and he locked himself in the fridge. He tried calling me 20 times but, of course, I had “unplugged”. He finally got a hold of his daughter who called the police, and they came and broke into my store to rescue the repairman. When I finally looked at my phone again and found out what I had missed, I realized that he had almost died. So now I don’t “unplug”. It’s not worth it. 5) The time I had ordered 100 turkeys from a farmer for Thanksgiving, pre-sold them all, then found out that a pack of foxes got into the turkey barn a day before they were supposed to go to slaughter and ate them all. Because of this, there were only a few days until Thanksgiving and I had to find another source for turkeys for all of my customers. I ended up meeting a farmer in a parking lot in Mississauga to make the trade off. They were all beautiful organic birds, and almost double the price of what I had promised my customers. Whatcha gonna do? I took a hit, sold them at the quoted price, and put a hex on foxes as a group. 6) The dozens of times my alarm company would wake me up in the middle of the night to say there was a burglary alarm going off at the store, but when I drove to the shop at that hour I would find out it was just the wind blowing a door just enough to jostle the alarm contact. It took me at least 12 times of going to the store for no reason at three am to figure out how to stop that from happening. I started ignoring those three am phone calls. 7) That time I ignored a 3 am phone call from my alarm company, and found out the next day that someone had broken in to the shop, went directly into my office where I kept the safe, and stole the whole thing with about $15,000 inside. It remains a mystery to this day who did it, and unfortunately, I have become less trusting because of that experience. But my new safe is steal-proof! I think. 8) The time water started leaking through the ceiling on the second floor, and we didn’t know where it was coming from, and then the ceiling collapsed because there was so much water coming down from a burst sprinkler pipe on the roof. It was - 25°C outside, and my staff soaked themselves trying to fix the problem. They are all awesome, that day sucked. 9) That time I was bringing food down to the Drake Hotel to host a BBQ on their patio, and when we got there, we realized that the food had all fallen out of the back of the van on the way down because the driver forgot to latch the door properly. We had to change the menu really quickly that night…. 10) I could keep going on with stories about things that didn’t work out so well, but I think I’ll end this list with a positive story. The time Alia and I got the news that we were going to have a son. I was standing in my office at the time, and I immediately teared up. We had been trying to have a child for a really long time, and I hadn’t been sure if we were going to get to be parents. Alia had been pregnant for weeks by the time of this phone call, but it’s almost as if I was in denial. Then, when we got that call, emotions and thoughts of promise flooded over me. Desmond was born a few months later, and after years of working overtime, all the time, I decided to change my daily routine. I decided that I didn’t need to be at the shop for 12 hours each day, or look over my staff’s shoulders to make sure they were doing it “my” way. They were quite excellent at doing it their way, which to be honest was just as good or better than mine 99% of the time. I am now able to focus my energy on how to make their lives better, and the experience of our customers. I am able to be a better business owner because of them, and because of our customers, who continue to enjoy what we do. Here’s to the beginning of the next ten years. We have some exciting projects on the horizon, and I will leave you with a bit of a sneak peek. Thanks for reading this far, and I hope to be writing to you in another decade. On the Horizon: 1) Contest Alert! In celebration of our anniversary, we will be giving away a few valuable gift cards. Look for signs in-store for more details, and follow us on Facebook or Instagram (@sanagansmeatlocker) for upcoming details. 2) We have been slowly, but surely, building a new website. This website will have tons of info on cooking meat, and what cuts to choose. But most importantly, it will be a shopping site, where you can order your favorite cuts and have them delivered straight to your door. Look for this early in the new year. 3) Speaking of delivery, we will be launching our official catering menu at the same time as the website. You can order online or by calling the shop and we can have a party tray delivered to your office or home the very next day! 4) The biggest project of all is the cookbook I have spent the last two years writing. This one is going to be huge. I can’t talk too much about it yet; all I will say is that it will be the only meat cookbook you will ever want. No big deal! We’re shooting for a fall 2020 release, so you have plenty of time to get excited! Thanks again to everyone for helping make Sanagan’s such an awesome part of the Toronto food scene. We’re so happy to be a part of it, and glad you can join us for the ride. See you in the store soon! Peter