NOVEMBER 2017 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC Hard work pays off for family business
Several generations work together to deliver fresh, local produce by MYRNA STARK LEADER
KELOWNA – Personal customer service, local produce picked fresh daily and innovation are keys to success for the owners of a roadside market in Kelowna. Shopping for vegetables and fruit at Don-O-Ray Farms is an experience. First time customers are quickly greeted with a friendly smile and an offer to help or answer questions. For regulars, it’s like Norm walking into the bar on the TV series Cheers. This is the feeling that the owners of this 60-year-old institution intentionally foster. Don-O-Ray was founded by
two brothers, Don and Ray Rampone and their parents. It was smaller but had moved to the current location on Benvoulin when the Sanghera and Basran families bought it in 2003. They left day jobs in Calgary searching for a lifestyle and a business that would bring family members closer together and go back to their farm roots in India. Jas Sanghera was 17 and had just finished high school. “Family is very important to me so when this decision was made, I didn’t think twice,” says Jas. “I just said, ‘Let’s go!’ Let’s move to Kelowna and get our hands into the dirt and let’s see how the business will grow.” It’s grown and so has he. At 31, Jas is now general manager of the family operation which includes a sizable retail store, 45-acre farm, partnerships with local growers, agri-tourism and community involvement. The business supports his
uncle, who is a partner, his parents, who are now in their 60s, his brother and wife and their two children, Jas and his wife, plus about eight employees. Today, as he talks, his
energy is low. Unlike other peak summer days, it isn’t because he was up at 3 a.m. harvesting produce to meet their “fresh-picked daily” advertising. There’s a health issue in the family and he’s concerned and a bit wary. Jas says that everyone
works together in the business and interactions help them stay close to their customers. “Most of our business is
word of mouth, so if I treat you good, you’re going to go tell 10 other people and they’re going to come to shop,” he explains. In true partnership, Gurraj,
his wife, continues the story. It’s fitting because she helps with marketing and promotion, including social media. “Every year, we’ve expanded in size but also
what we do. As our customer base grows, we want to accommodate for that,” she says. “We’ve added more products like the hot sauces and curry sauces that we make. Every year, we’re trying to become more versatile and be a one-stop shop which is the feedback we get from our customers.”
While they consider Don-O-
Ray a mixed business, Jas’s true love is farming. “We love farming. Farming
makes me happy,” he says. ”When I’m really frustrated with myself, I go to the farm and I spend time watching the crops grow or weeding them. It makes you feel very light inside. The stress goes away.” His father and uncle come
from and still have farms in India. There, they grow wheat, rice and sugar cane.
While farming is a passion,
hard work is the driving factor in a store that’s open from May through mid-November, depending on the weather and what produce is available. They plant cold-tolerant varieties of lettuce, tomatoes and kale so in November they can still meet their goal of selling fresh-picked local produce. The real growing season starts in January in their greenhouse. “There’s a lot of work that goes into bringing stuff to the market. Sometimes, people aren’t aware of that,” Gurraj says. “They see the display, but not everything that happens before that.” One of the keys to avoiding
burnout is that family members take turns at roles and everyone works as a team. This includes hired staff such as cashiers and field workers from Mexico. “Everything we do is an
extension of our family. We all work together and brainstorm together and we encourage our employees to follow their goals,” says Gurraj. At the same time, the operation can more easily manage issues like employee turnover because of the number of family members involved. “My niece is 13 and she is helping out. We’re training her, not working her,” says Jas.
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“She has an interest to learn
how things work and she’d taken the initiative,” says Gurraj. “We don’t push the kids.”
The operation isn’t organic.
This keeps the price lower, which pleases tourists and encourages repeat customers. Prices vary with supply and demand. They tend to increase when products are near the end of the season and based on scarcity and quality. “We grow vegetables,
herbs, and the fruit comes from our local farm partners,” says Jas, who’s learned a lot in the last 13 years about
business and relationships. “It does get easier to work with family the more we know and understand each other.” Every year, they come up with new ideas says Gurraj. “We want to keep growing but right now we’re staying were we are and refining things as we get customer feedback,” she says. “We always had a little
chicken coop,” Jas interjects, “but our customers always said we should add to it, so this year we expanded it and plan to add other friendly animals. We want them to feel like it’s a farm.”
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Gurraj, Jasmit, Jasbir, Sameen with Harkirat, Rajwinder and Kamaljit Sanghera make customer service and production at Don-O-Ray Vegetables in Kelowna a family affair. MYRNA STARK LEADER PHOTO
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