Behan family 'made the right decision' as Athlone fruit and veg shop closes

When Phil Behan opened his Athlone fruit and veg shop on Saturday mornings, eight or ten years ago, he could have 20 customers in the door before 10am.

“Now I would be very lucky to have two,” he says. “All the older customers have passed away and they are not being replaced by the younger generation. That's just the reality.”

Behan's Fruit and Veg has been synonymous with the business life of Athlone town for the past 36 years, and while the decision to close the much-loved business may have come as a huge shock to most people, it was a decision that Phil and Betty Behan, and their only daughter, Sharon, agonised over since last January.

“We were back and forth since then, 'Will we? Won't we?'” says Sharon Behan, who has worked alongside her father in the family business for the past 21 years.

“I was very emotional on the day I wrote the Facebook post announcing the closure, but when I woke up the next morning I knew we had definitely made the right decision,” she says.

Sitting alongside her father in the upstairs office which has served as the engine for the Behan family business since they re-located from their first premises at Sean Costello Street to a landmark listed building on Scotch Parade in 1988, Sharon Behan says she was prepared to remain in the family business for as long as her father wanted to stay.

“I am absolutely delighted that my father has decided to retire,” admits Sharon.

“I'm just thrilled, to be honest, I feel he has given all his time and his effort to the business, he had done all he can and now it's time for him to do whatever he chooses to do, without having to think about going to work'” she says.

At 74 years of age, Phil Behan says “things are not the same in business as they used to be,” and both he and his daughter admit that the entire shopping culture has been changing gradually over the last number of years, and will continue to do so into the future.

“I'm not able to buy the fruit and veg that the multiples are selling for half nothing.

“In fact they are using it as a loss leader. We have the best customers in the world, there's nobody like them, but the younger generation are not replacing our older customers. They are buying everything in the supermarkers and we can no longer compete with that,” he says.

Sharon Behan completely agrees. “When Dad decided to retire I had to ask myself whether I can see a future in this business over the next five to ten years, and I don't see any future in this line of work, it was my decision to make because I was taking over the business so we said 'right, we will go together and I am very happy to have made that decision,” she says.

Phil Behan leaves his home in Walderstown twice a week at 4.30am to get the freshest Irish produce at the fruit and vegetable markets around Dublin's Capel Street, a trip he has been making for the past 49 years since he first started working with Sean Barry of Clonbrusk.

“When we started here first we had some great local farmers who supplied us with all our produce, but they are gone out of business so we have to go to Dublin, but even the markets there are much smaller than they used to be because 90% of the fruit and veg is coming in from abroad,” says Phil, who adds that the last seven to eight years have been “very hard for all small businesses” particularly the one-off independent shops.

He recalls that when he went into the business first, Dunnes Stores was the only supermarket in Athlone and the town was “alive with independent shops”.

The large-scale proliferation of discount supermarkets on the Irish retail landscape in recent years has “destroyed every town in Ireland,” he says, and can result in the closure of “seven or eight local shops” due to the huge range of stock on offer to shoppers in the multiples.

However, both Phil and Sharon Behan agree that this is the future of the retail landscape for every town.

With regard to their own decision to close, Sharon Behan says “a combination of factors” led them to making the difficult decision, including the huge change in people's eating habits.

“People eat out a lot more; the younger generation are not cooking a traditional dinner of meat, potatoes and veg in the evenings, it's more often a grab and go from a deli on the way to a match; our older customers are dying and they are not being replaced.”

Over the past 36 years in Scotch Parade, the Behan's customers became their friends “and we have made friends for life”, says Sharon.

“Saying goodbye to their beloved business was probably one of the most difficult decisions they have ever made, but, according to Sharon Behan, “it was definitely the right one.”