A locally-owned convenience store is aiming to improve safety and reduce losses by keeping products and staff behind glass
Up North Convenience opened last week on Gore Street at Wellington Street East with a peculiar feature: the staff and most of the products are behind safety glass.
It offers items like milk, bread and beer that people who live nearby would have to travel a bit of a bit to get, in a safe environment.
Practically everything in the store is behind glass to keep people safe and maintain low prices by preventing theft, staff said.
The store is owned by Serge Pietramale, a former high school teacher at White Pines who currently teaches at Kina Awiiya School, who used to visit the previous store in that location, a Mac’s, to get his sugar fix.
Jasmine Teske, a former student of Pietramale’s, is now using her years of customer service experience to train and supervise new staff.
Up North stocks all the usual convenience store items, plus Lock City Dairy products and hot-to-go Aurora’s Pizza slices.
“Some people already have their preset ideas about this area and they already have it in their head that they won’t feel safe. We’re reminding people that there are ways to stay safe, to keep your employees safe and keep your product safe,” she said.
A side benefit of the stock being behind glass is that the store should be able to keep product affordable because it will experience less losses due to shoplifting.
“It seems like the customers that people would assume would be the ones stealing are actually the ones that are so thankful to have this in the community. And they’re actually the ones saying this is amazing.”
Teske said most customers during the first week in business have applauded the effort to invest in the area.
“The amount of optimism and positivity and thankfulness, to not only have some place around the corner to go and get milk, but someplace local where they can go and get anything,” Teske said.
The store also has a licence to sell beer, which has been harder to source downtown since the LCBO closed at Station Mall and the Beer Store on Bruce Street became a distribution centre.
“That’s definitely going to be one of our big sellers, as always. Everybody likes a nice cold beer after work,” Teske said.
One of the store’s philosophies is to treat every person that walks in the door the same.
“To acknowledge somebody, to welcome them into the store no matter if they look like they have money to spend or not. That’s really important to me — and to remind them they’re welcome here if they ever need anything,” she said.
Up North Convenience is open 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week.