Sunbury Family Store – looking back and moving forward

May 19, 2021

Janet and Dwight Ritchie have been living in and operating the Sunbury General Store for 27 years, offering food, gas, work clothes, and other essentials to a large community of people in the Sunbury vicinity.

Late last year, Mike Healey who lives nearby on Washburn Road with his partner Angie Clark, asked the Ritchie’s if they would consider selling the building and the business, and they said to make an offer.

“So I wrote down an offer on a piece of paper and they accepted it,” said Mike Healey.

It took a while to sort out all of the details of course, but Mike and Angie took over in March. Janet and Dwight still live in the apartment upstairs and Janet is still working the early morning shift in the store, so there is a lot of continuity in the store, which is good for the existing store clientele.

The takeover took place in March, a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, and just a couple of weeks before the latest lockdown, which is still in place.

“People have been telling me I was crazy to buy a business during COVID, and that may be true, but the potential for this building and this location is tremendous.

Healey, who is a contractor by trade, and Clark, a personal support worker, are learning the ropes in the store, which they have renamed the Sunbury Family Store, while continuing to work fulltime.

Sales were slow in late March and early April, but have picked up since then. The snack bar, which has always been popular, features pizza, homemade pies, sandwiches and fresh baking. One of the first changes that was made, was to open up the sightlines to the large grocery room at the south end of the store.

Fresh and frozen meat, a larger line of grocery items, and vegetables, are featured in that section of the store.

“The building is much larger than many people realise,” said Healey, “it is over 8,000 square feet, with all the additions that have been tacked on over the years.”

A tour of the entire building shows how, in the past, the store was a full-fledged general store, complete with a butcher shop. The hooks are still in place in what was at one time a small abattoir. There is also a second apartment, in addition to the one that the Ritchies' occupy, and room for storage elsewhere in the complex.

The store is also the only gas station between Seeley’s Bay and Kingston, and within the next few weeks, that aspect of the business will be upgraded significantly. The fuel company, Centex, will be installing new pumps and signs.

And in the coming months, a stand-alone Cannabis outlet will be set up, using the entrance door that is behind the gas pumps. The cannabis outlet will have outside ownership, but Healey is working on renovating the storefront to the required standards and isolating the entrance.

All of these changes have been slower than the new owners had hoped for, since the current lockdown has made it harder to get necessary work done.

Even something as simple as getting a new lottery license, which was necessitated by the change in ownership, has been delayed.

“We got our approval, which was delayed, but the process for getting everything in place can’t happen because of the lockdown. We hope that will happen in June, crossing our fingers that the lockdown will end on June 2nd” said Healey.

The exterior of the building is going to be refurbished and repainted as well, and new signage is going up. The look of the space will be freshened up, but with a retro finish to tie in to the fact that in spite of modern changes, such as a Cannabis outlet, the store remains what it always was, a community resource for people who can not, or do not want to, go to Kingston all the time to get what they need.

All of the challenges around starting a new business during a pandemic are being taken in stride by Healey and Clark, as they plan for the next season, and years to come.

“We are committed to being a store that provides good value, friendly service, and has everything people need. We have clothing, like before, and new lines of clothing as well, televisions, good food, groceries, and gas. And we respond. People have asked us to bring in certain products for them, and we do our best to get them,” Healey said.