Q&A; with Alan Arzoian

It’s easy to spot owner Alan Arzoian in his time-warp of a grocery store, Handy Market, at 2514 W. Magnolia Blvd. For one, he’s forever fitted in his usual shorts and short-sleeved shirt, greeting regulars by first name or checking on the produce. Another reason is because at 4,000 square feet, Handy Market just isn’t that big.

Arzoian, who first became involved with the family business in 1970 before graduating from Hoover High in Glendale and moving onto Cal State Los Angeles, sat down with us for a quick back-and-forth about the economy, its impact on his business and those pesky cravings for steak.

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CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO: How’s business?

ALAN ARZOIAN: I think Burbank has been affected a lot less than some other cities, of course. But business here is definitely down. I think for a multitude of reasons, the main one being that the studios aren’t shooting as much as they used to. They’ve taken a lot out of state and they’ve cut back a lot of new production and they have a lot of reality shows. Generally speaking, that affects business here for all of us.

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Q: Can you tell me how much you’re off?

A: The grocery side is holding its own, and we can safely say things are flat. But on the catering side with the studios, we’re down at least 50%. Those are big, big numbers.

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Q: You’ve been here coming on four decades, what’s your secret?

A: You know I think No. 1 is that we try to work with our customers, give them good products at reasonable prices. You want to have good staffing. You want to have employees that actually want to be there. We’ve been fortunate where, for a small independent market like we are, we’ve had people here more than 20 years. I would say over half our staff has been here longer than five years. That’s sort of unheard of on a small-business level. We were fortunate to be in the city of Burbank, in Magnolia Park. Burbank is very pro-business, and I think there’s a nice balance between businesses and neighborhoods. It’s been a good city to have a business in.

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Q: However you did it, you’ve managed to harness that staying power. Any advice for new business owners or those looking to relocate to Burbank?

A: I hope they have something that is really necessary. Look at my neighbor at Porto’s [Bakery]. There’s an operation that can’t be beat. They line up out the door there. He has a very unique product, he gives people value, hopefully your company does some of those things. And hopefully people have businesses like that that want to come to Burbank.

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Q: How much of your business is Burbank-based?

A: On the grocery side, 100%. On the catering side, of course you go into Hollywood, but most of that, too, is Burbank-based.

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Q: When did you start the catering and how big of a component of the overall business is it?

A: Two years ago it was bigger than the grocery, but it has shrunk to probably half of the grocery. That could all change because it didn’t start happening until January of this year. I see things getting better. We fell off the cliff, we’re in the valley, and now we need to get ourselves out of it. It’s going to take some time.

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Q: It’s that time in the interview where we need to wake people up. What’s the wackiest thing you’ve ever seen here?

A: The thing about Magnolia Park?.?.?.

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Q: We’ll get to Magnolia Park in a later question. [laughter] Come on, hasn’t anyone in all these years done anything wacky, walked in here nude?

A: Actually, we’ve had a couple of these ladies walk in here naked. We quickly put something on them and called the police if we needed to. One time we had a bunch of gypsies come in here and I thought we were just real busy. These guys were good. I said, “Hey, we’re getting a late rush here.” Then lo and behold they walked out with a bunch of stuff. When I walked out behind them they had the license plates taped off. They didn’t hurt anybody and they took what they took and were gone. This was probably nine, 10 years ago.