Market trader John Kikidis keeping it in the family

It was love and family that steered John Kikidis to the Hellenic Deli.

And maybe the 30 different varieties of olives.

The groundbreaking business was started by his wife’s parents in 1972.

His mother-in-law Eleni, who had come to Australia by herself as a teenager, was still learning English when she invested her savings from market work into the lease on a butter shop in the Dairy Hall.

After she met and married John Xasteroulis, who “pretty much grew up in an olive grove,” the pair turned the shop into a specialised Greek deli.

Back then it was a purveyor of rarely found products from home and a meeting place for the community, their son-in-law says.

The couple’s three daughters grew up serving Greek migrants on weekends and school holidays.

At the same time their parents prioritised the girls’ education, and eventually the eldest went into law while the other two became teachers.

John junior first met the middle sister, Anna, in the 1990s when she started working at his chicken shop at the market while studying education.

After a break of about a year, he found himself working with her again.

“We just got along and started talking, and one thing led to another,” he says.

“From there things just got better and better, and that’s it, we got married.”

While he had qualified as a civil engineer, in the early days making a living at the market was easier, John says.

And when his in-laws put their shop up for sale in 2006 the couple bought it.

“It suited us at that moment of time when we were newly married and starting a family. One of us could work, and the other one could stay at home and look after the kids.”

Now, 20 years later, those kids – two daughters aged 19 and 20 and a 14-year-old son – help out in their spare time, alongside a couple of long-term staff who are “pretty much like family”.

Nowadays the store’s clientele is “very multicultural” but its stock remains almost exclusively Greek.

“I’d say 80 per cent of our stuff comes from Greece,” John says. 

Alongside the many marinated and plain olives, the shop stocks are nine kinds stuffed by the family themselves – with feta, sundried tomato, anchovy, pesto, garlic, almond, chilli, saganaki and parmesan.

The deli also sells oil from John’s in-laws’ groves in Greece.

“We bring it down from Sparta and we sell it by the litre,” he says. “You can either bring in your bottle to be filled or buy one off us.”

There are also plenty of foods and dishes prepared locally, including dips and antipasto, octopus prepped by the family, pork and orange sausages and sweets such as halva and chocolates.

At Easter and Christmas, the shop sells the sweet bread Tsoureki.

After two decades behind the counter John still enjoys “mingling” and talking to his customers, especially about football.

And the deli, he notes, has so far put two of his three kids as well as his wife and her sisters through their education.

“It’s been a good little shop,” he says. “I’ve enjoyed my time in there.

“And it’s been at the core of our family for over 50 years.” •