In 1959, Morris Leider, then in his mid-twenties, purchased a run-down meat shop on Baldwin Avenue. Six weeks later his business partner, more than twice his age, backed out to move to Australia leaving the young entrepreneur, who had no knowledge of the butcher business, alone to manage the store and mired in debt.
The story behind one of Kensington Market’s best-known and long-standing stores is just as interesting as its surrounding neighbourhood. Leider, known fondly as “Mr. Morris”, now 76, transformed the tiny butcher shop into the popular European Quality Meat and Sausages, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this month.
“I’d never been in a meat market in my life. I didn’t know the shoulder from the hind quarter from the ribs,” Leider told CityNews.ca.
“The first day we took in $58 in the store, and I figured expenses were $110 for the day.”
Leider has a long history with Kensington Market. A Holocaust survivor, at 15 he immigrated to Toronto from Ukraine after the Second World War with his family, who were with the partisans. Shortly after, he dropped out of school to help support his family and started working at a cheese store -- now Global Cheese -- on Kensington Avenue.
A Kensington "Golden Boy"
He worked his way up from sweeping floors and doing deliveries and eventually became a successful manager -- a time he claims he was known as a “golden boy on the street”, by boosting sales to $7,000 a week from just over $2,000.
“A pound of butter was 49 cents, a pound of cheese was 29 cents … so for $7,000 you really had to hustle,” he explained.
When the opportunity to purchase and refurbish a dilapidated butcher shop came up, he took it and went into business with a 58-year-old man, who decided to pack up and move Down Under just six weeks later.
Profit Problems
After three years of putting in 17 and 18-hour days, Leider still wasn’t posting decent profits and went to the bank manager he dealt with when he ran the cheese store, hoping for a loan. The banker loaned the struggling young businessman $23,000 even though he had no collateral -- a definite sign of how the times have changed.
“I was thinking of running away, from Toronto, from embarrassment, and … [the bank manager] said ‘I have confidence in you.’ I’d lost confidence in myself already because at that time, after three years if you don’t know what you’re doing, I mean it’s hard,” he said.
“He’d seen what I’d done for the other place so he had confidence.”
The investment paid off and Leider, who started out with a staff of about five, with one butcher and a handful of women working the counter, now boasts a staff of more than 200, two retail locations and a Brampton processing plant. His passion and work ethic rubbed off on his family. Leider’s kids, Sandy and Larry, and some extended family are active in the business. Some of Leider’s butchers have been with him up to 40 years.
‘There’s a lot of stories … from over those years,” he said, jokingly recalling how he used to say he’d retire at 55.
“I don’t know what happened.”
Leider has been working out of his Brampton location for the past 20 years.
One story from about 40 years ago that stuck out in Leider’s mind involved a young woman who fainted in his store during a heat wave. The staff picked her up and sat her down in a walk-in fridge to cool off, dabbing her head with a moistened apron.
“She was sitting down and we wiped her face and when she opened up her eyes she noticed the meat hanging, hanging down, you know the hinds, and she fainted again,” he recalled laughing.
The company celebrates its golden anniversary at its Kensington Market and Jutland Road stores on Sat., Nov. 14 with food specials, clowns and face painting for kids.
shawne.mckeown@rci.rogers.com
