The phrase born and raised is easy to toss around, but it isn’t quite true in the case of Robert Duhaime, who took over the Dollar Store at the start of the month. “We moved here when I was four months old,” he clarifies. “And I did all my school here. I started working at the grocery store when I was 11 or 12, just picking up carts and working outside. That was before Darryl.”
And, while he did move away for a few years, he has spent the last eleven years back at the grocery store.
But as of November 1, he’s no longer at the grocery store. Instead, he’s running the Dollar Store, which is now Rockin’ Rob’s.
“I’ve always wanted my own spot,” says Duhaime. “I’ve never cared about making big dollars. I just want to have my own place.”
He says he hadn’t seriously considered taking over the space until Christine Vandeburgt asked if he would be interested. “It wasn’t something I had considered. I’ve always wanted to run a grocery store. But if this works, I think it’s going to be good.”
Vandeburgt says they’ve been looking at selling the store for ten years. “When we first moved to Tumbler Ridge, we said we’d do this for 10 years. And now it’s 20. Well, it’s time.”
Vandeburgt says she and husband Kees will keep running Ridge Cannabis, and they have other plans on the go as well. They’ve build a wall cutting the space of the dollar store in half. “That makes it more economical for Robert to manage, and we don’t have furniture, right? So we have to do something with that space. So we’re planning on turning it into a sports lounge with golf simulators. There’ll be TVs. We’ve applied for liquor license, but we really want it to be family oriented. So we are going to have it so kids can come in with their parents up until nine at night. That’s the plan there.”
Of course, they wouldn’t mind if someone would come and take over that space, too. “That would be our preference, because we really want to slow down. We’re at the retirement age and so the goal is to build it and they will come kind of thing. Hopefully someone will come forward that would like to run it.”
For now, though, the plan is to keep Ridge Cannabis. “It’s easy to manage for us. It’s not as labor intensive as the dollar store. You know, my knees are bad, my hands are bad… We’re getting old. The Dollar Store is just way too much labor for us. If we hadn’t found somebody to take it over, we were going to close November 1. Thank goodness Robert came forward and was interested in possibly taking it over.”
In fact, after years of trying to find someone to take over the place, there were three potential bidders. They choose Duhaime. “We chose Robert because of his work ethics. We know how hard he works like over there, we know his customer service skills. And he’s local. He’ll work his butt off to make a go of it.”
For his part, Duhaime says the goal is to not make any big changes to the place. “Eventually, I’d like to add some groceries into it, since I am a grocery-type person. So I might start to add some stuff from a different warehouse.”
And for their part? Christine and Kees plan to stay in Tumbler Ridge…at least over the summer. “Maybe we’ll go away in the winter. Be snowbirds. We like to travel, so if that ever becomes a thing again, we definitely want to do that. Kees is a workaholic, so I can’t imagine him ever not doing anything. He’ll probably always have some kind of project on the go. He’s really happy with the project next door, to be able to do all the construction and organizing. It’s keeping him busy. We never say never, and we never make really concrete plans for the future because you never know what’s in front of you at that time.
“I want to congratulate Robert on taking over the dollar store and I just want to reiterate that how important it is for people to shop local. Robert is a local boy from Tumbler Ridge, and he’s not going anywhere. So you know, the more people shop locally, the better off he’ll do and that money will stay in town. What you spend in town stays in your community. It benefits everybody.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
