Variety Abounds at Jiffy Market Wine and Deli

Vintage store spans three generations of family.Jiffy Market has evolved from convenience store to popular wine shopByline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

In recent years, trendy, local bottle markets and upscale delicatessens have proliferated and reinvented themselves all over Eugene, but not much has changed at Jiffy Market.

Take the name, for starters. It goes back to the very beginning, 42 years ago, when a pair of local businessmen opened a neighborhood market at Hilyard Street and 34th Avenue in Eugene.

A year later, Bertha “Bert” and Ed Robertson bought the business and kept the name, running it as a mom and pop grocery for the next 20-some years.

Today, Jiffy Market burbles along under the gentle command of brothers Joe and Tom Robertson, who tend to shrug when asked questions about what changes might lie ahead for the neighborhood institution. They hope to build a cover for the deck sometime soon, but other than that, there’s not much on the horizon, they say.

“We’ve thought about changing the name, but it’s just been there so long,” says Joe Robertson, 57, who’s had a hand in the business for 35 years and took over when his parents bowed out in the early 1980s.

Jiffy Market underwent a true metamorphosis in 1985, when the brothers gutted the building, reduced the square footage and reopened with a delicatessen and a new emphasis on wine.

“That seemed to be the direction things were going,” Tom Robertson recalls. “Wine was becoming very popular.”

Today, they stock about 1,300 labels, with an emphasis on good value for the dollar. They also hold regular wine tastings and offer classes for would-be wine connoisseurs. (Of course, you can still find all the convenience-store essentials, such as milk, batteries, laundry detergent, toilet paper and canned soup.)

With 16 employees, the brothers are able to delegate tasks and responsibilities in a way their parents could only have dreamed of when they bought the business.

“When they first started, they probably worked all the shifts themselves,” from early morning to late at night, seven days a week, says Tom Robertson.

For Tom and Joe, 50-hour workweeks are more typical, and they even manage to carve out time for the odd vacation. Most days, Joe works the early shift, starting at 6 a.m. and heading home around 3 p.m.; Tom comes in around 10 a.m. and leaves around 6 p.m.

Tom, who took his first wine class in the mid-1980s, presides over the Friday night wine tastings, which resumed on Oct. 1.

“We don’t do it in the summer – that’s beer drinking weather,” he says.

He also teaches the wine appreciation classes, which began Oct. 11 and cost $80. Both the tastings and the classes are held in a separate room adjoining the 2,500-square-foot store.

“It’s mainly for the beginner,” says Tom Robertson, 53. “You learn how to use your nose, how to use your tongue, how to use a wine glass, how to use a corkscrew, how to differentiate between different components of wine, everything to do with sensory evaluation. It’s a pretty humorous kind of a class. We have a lot of fun.”

Jiffy Market’s clientele is intensely local, and intensely loyal. About 95 percent of customers either work, live or attend school in the area, and visit the store regularly, Tom Robertson says.

“A lot of the people who come in here have been coming in for 20, 30 years,” Tom says.

Both men say it is the customers who have kept them in this family business so long.

“They let us abuse them every day and they keep coming back,” jokes Tom Robertson.

In the past, Jiffy Market has leased space to independent eateries, including Tasty Thai Kitchen. The brothers say they’d consider another such partnership if the right one came along, but that for the time being the delicatessen handles breakfast, lunch and dinner quite nicely.

There’s nothing fancy about Jiffy’s deli. It’s standard American fare – bacon and eggs, sandwiches, cheeseburgers, fish and chips, burritos, soups and salads.

Joe’s 25-year-old daughter, Kelly, has managed the deli for four years. While she’s not planning to make a career of it, she likes working alongside her relatives.

“Of course, there’s more expected of you when it’s a family business, plus you care about it probably more than you would otherwise,” said Kelly, who’s considering colleges and may pursue a teaching career.

Kelly’s brother, 27-year-old Matt, has worked the counter off and on over the years, and cousin Brooks, 14, is a box boy when he’s not in school or traveling around the country. Brooks, Tom’s son, is an acclaimed finger-style guitarist who last spring won a nationwide talent contest on Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” radio show.

While not all siblings could work closely together in harmony, the brothers say conflicts are rare and generally mild.

“I think the main things is just trying to share the same vision on things, so there’s some compromising,” says Tom Robertson, who went to college and worked as a musician and potter before joining his brother at Jiffy Market in the early 1980s.

Like many small businesses, Jiffy Market felt the recession of several years ago, and is still feeling the aftermath.

“We used to sell a lot more high-end cases” of wine, Tom Robertson says. “People have gotten more conservative.”

But the brothers don’t seem too concerned about competition from other bottle markets or places such as Trader Joe’s, with its popular bargain wines.

Says Joe Robertson: “I think people are trying to support these kinds of neighborhood markets again.”

Quoting this article by Anne Williams at The Register-Guard

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