ByWard Fruit Market is closing for good this spring

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“Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.”
— The Song of Solomon, 2:5.

For a little over a quarter of a century, Isaac and Miriam Farbiasz and their ByWard Fruit Market store have stood as mainstays in the ByWard Market, enduring anchors of the bustling food retail scene that for more than a century was the district’s beating heart.

The 26 years the couple have operated their store — they bought it in 1999 — is just the tip of the iceberg at 36 ByWard Market Square. A black-and-white photo in the shop’s front window shows onetime owner M.Z. Lithwick in the doorway of the same grocery store, in 1930. How far back it was a grocer’s is unclear; It’s been Greenberg’s Fruit Store and Greenberg and Weltman. In the early 1920s, it was Fraser’s, specializing in butter, eggs and potatoes. In the 1880s, it was Dominion Flour store.

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But things have changed — things are constantly changing — and soon, ByWard Fruit Market, the last brick-and-mortar greengrocer in the Market, will be gone, its doors shuttered briefly before something else takes its place. For the next five or six weeks, until Easter, the Farbiaszes will operate their business as usual, after which the “dismantling,” as Isaac describes it, will occur, a clearance sale with the last vestiges expected to disappear by the end of May.

“The ByWard Market is a market in history and name only,” says Isaac. “It’s not coming back to what it was,” an assertion that a quick walk along the historic block of ByWard Market Square between George and York streets supports. Long gone, for those who even remember, are the likes of Zunders Fruitland, Budapest Delicatessen and Slipacoff’s Premium Meats. The string of colourful outdoor farmers’ stalls has been reduced to a single one. More recently, in 2023, The House of Cheese closed, followed by Saslove’s Meat Market last fall. Many have been replaced by restaurants, bars or takeout foods.

“Food retail,” says Isaac, “is being replaced by food ingestion.”

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The closing of Saslove’s in particular is a reminder of the tenuous yet important synergy between like businesses in an area. With no butcher left in the Market last December, there were, for the first time in living memory, no customers in the Market buying Christmas turkeys. That absence was felt down the street by the Farbiaszes, as fewer people came to their shop for the assorted potatoes, yams, herbs, beans, Brussels sprouts, mushrooms, carrots and what-have-you that might accompany those stuffed birds come Christmas Day.

Food retail is being replaced by food ingestion.

“Without Saslove’s, those customers simply stopped coming,” Isaac laments. “We weren’t losing money — until this past year. And once we did, we knew it was time. We’ve accepted that. We’ve had a really good run.”

Perhaps it’s Isaac’s scientific background in biochemistry that allows him to cite some of the factors that contributed to the store’s closure without betraying even a note of bitterness.

The pandemic, of course, was the single most destructive, closing nearby offices and discouraging in-person shopping. The Farbiaszes pivoted, collaborating with other food stores in the Market — Saslove’s, La Bottega, the French Baker and Lapointe’s Fish — to create an online ordering platform called Best of ByWard. “It worked for a while,” says Isaac, “but after the worst of the pandemic, habits changed. People figured out other ways to get their food. They weren’t coming downtown anymore.”

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It wasn’t just the home cooks: the restaurant and embassy chefs who once descended on the Market at 7 a.m. each day in search of the freshest ingredients also stopped coming. These days, ByWard Fruit doesn’t open until 9 a.m.

Earlier changes to traffic patterns in the Market, dictated by the city, didn’t help. According to Isaac, the closure of just a single block of William Street, between Clarence and York, to all motor vehicles except those exiting the parking garage at 70 Clarence St. was a huge blow. “Just from that closure, we saw a 10 per cent decline in business overnight.” Customers additionally complained of resulting traffic snarls on Dalhousie Street that discouraged them from visiting the Market.

The exodus of the outdoor stalls, meanwhile, far from simply handing a greater share of fruit and vegetable sales to the Farbiaszes, had the opposite effect by eliminating the critical mass necessary to attract customers.

While some hold out hope for a revival of food retail in the Market, the Farbiaszes acknowledge the current trend may be irreversible. “The city is different now,” says Isaac. “With UberEats, SkipTheDishes and meal subscription boxes, people just don’t shop the way they used to.”

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And so, in their 70s, the couple prepares for what Isaac jokingly refers to as a “parole” after a “life sentence” of early mornings, weekly supply runs to Montreal, and long days of retail. “I’ll miss the customers the most,” he says. “Miriam and I have become close friends with many of them. We’ve been to their homes, shared in their joys and losses. You don’t get that kind of connection at a supermarket.”

The story of ByWard Fruit is more than simply that of a business closure. It reflects a broader transformation of the Market. But beyond that, its pending demise feels like the loss of a cherished family member, one who for years comforted us.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

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