Picone Fine Food During COVID • by Jeff Mahoney • 2

Picone Fine Food During COVID: Talking with Theresa Picone by Jeff Mahoney             Theresa never missed the talk as much as she did over this last year and a half as her family’s ongoing gift to this city struggled to keep giving, during probably the most trying ordeal of its long existence. Sisters Lisa, left, and Theresa Picone, centre, and Sharon Picone-Balardo still operate the Dundas grocery store their grandfather started 100 years ago. Today the sisters specialize in fresh local produce and European imported speciality foods. - Cathie Coward,The Hamilton Spectator, from 2015.             For all its hardiness and robust cracker barrel charm (Mediterranean style), for all its longevity and deep and continually replenished reservoirs of customer goodwill, a grocery business like Picone Fine Food can also be a fragile one.             “We’ve been through recessions,” Theresa tells me. “And frosts and droughts and strikes that affect the food supply. We’re so dependent on the weather.” Picone Fine Food doesn’t have big warehouses where they can store food for months. They depend on produce and other foods coming in fresh on a daily and weekly basis.             Then there are larger economic and market forces that can sweep away every small business in their paths.    [  >>>>>   FORWARD ]     + [Distillate © HA&L + Jeff Mahoney {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]