By Andrea Caruso
Upon walking into the India Grocery Store, each customer receives a friendly greeting from behind the counter.
“Hey boss! What’s up?” store owner Chit Singh asks a customer.
The strong smell of Indian spices greets everyone who walks into the store. Three rows of Indian foods and spices fill the shelves, and posters of Indian films advertising DVD rentals are hung on the back wall of the store.
The India Grocery Store, located on the corner of Bronson Avenue and Somerset Street West, is a small family-owned business.
Singh started the India Grocery Store, along with his wife and son, five years ago. He was born in India and began working at his father’s business. After moving to Canada about 20 years ago, Singh worked at a friend’s store, and then bought his own.
Singh’s son, Wilder Singh, 26, works with his father part time for the store. He says he doesn’t mind helping out for now, but does not see himself working in the family ‘s grocery business.
Wilder says his father suggested opening up another store together that he could manage, but Wilder says he is not too keen on the idea.
“There is too much stress,” he says of running his own business. “And it’s a lot of work.”
Although Singh would like to be in business with his son, he says his son should do whatever interests him.
“People have choices everywhere. Plus you have to like [what you do],” says Singh.
Just down the street at A and E’s Confectionary, owner Joe Tang, 48, tells a similar story.
Tang originally bought the convenience store in 1989 with his wife Connie, 48, and her sister Daisy Chan, when they moved to Canada from Hong Kong.
While Tang worked for a high-tech company, the two women, who ran a family-owned grocery store in China, took care of A and E’s. After running the store for six years the Tang family sold the store in 1994.
Connie says her children, Alan and Andrew, now 19 and 18, were old enough to require more of her attention, so she could no longer run the business.
Tang, along with two business partners, only recently bought back A and E’s this past year. He says the previous owner was not doing well, and since he still owns the building, he wants to “build [the business] back up.”
However, Tang says he does not intend on owning the store in the extended future.
He says he is doing it right now while his sons attend university.
“I plan to run the store for two to three years and then see how it’s going,” Tang says.
While both Alan and Andrew help out with A and E’s, it is unlikely that either of them would take over the business. However both parents agree that whatever their children choose to do is fine.
“I don’t think my kids would reject the business,” Connie says, “but it’s up to their choice.”
Rupert Yeung, executive director of the Ottawa Chinese Community Service Centre, says this view seems more apparent now that many people are attending college or university.
“Most kids will have their own professional training and will be unwilling to take over the family business,” he says.
According to Yeung, many of the Chinese immigrants own grocery stores or restaurants.
He says the owners generally have to work nights and weekends.
“It is not an occupation people would aspire to go into if they have some education in Canada.”
Yeung predicts that the tradition of family-owned businesses will decline as more children pursue post-secondary education.
He says owners will continue to operate their stores as long as possible, but eventually the businesses will be sold to someone outside the family.