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AJ's DelightsIf you have been looking for a good local source of Eastern European foods, you will want to stop by AJ's Delights in the Triphammer Mall. The shop is just a month old, but already the Russian speaking community and people of Eastern European heritage are finding it. "We accept everybody, not only the Russian speaking community," says Inna Vishnevskaya, who owns the shop with her husband Mikhail Abramyan. "Americans with German background, Hungarians, Poles, Czech... they come and they say there used to be a store downtown. People say they miss it and they're glad that we opened."The couple opened AJ's Delights on March 6th, but have been working on the project since last September. Originally from Azerbaijan, they saw a need for an Eastern European food source in Ithaca. " It took a month to write a business plan, because we had no idea what a business plan is," says Vishnevskaya. "So we took all the books from the library and our oldest daughter, big thanks to her. She typed it. Her English vocabulary is much better than ours. We worked on it for a month. Numbers we can do, it's universal. It's just English that took a long time."
Actually Vishnevskaya's English is quite good, as are the delights she sells. "We opened a grocery store, mostly Eastern European, Russian, Middle Eastern, Israel," she explains. "We have specialities that you can't find at Tops or P&C or local supermarkets. We also make home made cookies, we sell sausages. It's not only for the Russian speaking community. Lots of Americans come who have an Eastern European background."
A family business, the husband and wife team runs the store with their parents. A wall of groceries lines one wall, with a counter on the other side. The couple plans to add lunch offerings, with a seating area at the front of the shop where customers can have lunch and perhaps read a Russian newspaper. "We're going to put a little cafeteria here. People are asking for deli, so we'll put in a deli counter to make sandwiches and to expand our business," Vishnevskaya says.
The couple was surprised at how fast the word spread when they opened. "Lots of people, Russian speaking, from Corning -- they used to go to a Rochester store. Now they come to us. Cortland, Dryden, they used to go to Syracuse," Vishnevskaya says. "Two women came yesterday and they said that in Corning's mall somebody posted that there's a Russian store opened. We advertised here, but we didn't advertise there. It's just word of mouth, it's the best commercial so far within the Russian speaking community."
Vishnevskaya and Abramyan came from Azerbaijan, in the southeast part of the former Soviet Union. They lived in Russia for five years before coming to Ithaca. The couple has two girls, one in High School, the other in Middle School. They live in the Village of Lansing within walking distance of the store, which makes the location ideal.
The couple worked hard to get to the point where they could open the store. While living in Russia Abramyan started several businesses. He would open a shop, establish it and sell it. "Open, establish, sell," Vishnevskaya recalls. "But when we came here we had to start from zero. No money, no friends, no language, nothing. It's like we moved to Mars."
The first six or seven months, they found themselves on welfare as many immigrants do. "We didn't want to be there, getting food stamps, etc., "Vishnevskaya says. "So Mike went to work. We came here in September of 1995. In January he got a job as a maintenance man, his first job. We had to go on. Otherwise you won't learn a language, you won't learn anything, and you will be on welfare for the rest of your life, which we didn't want to do."
They both worked at a succession of jobs, and all the while Vishnevskaya hoped to pursue a career as a pianist. One of her jobs was working part time in the Lansing schools as the piano accompanist. She was there for seven years beginning in 1996. "Then I got a little tiny position at Syracuse University as a piano accompanist, and we made a huge mistake," she says. "We moved there last September. I though maybe I'd start a career, but it didn't work. Basically you work only when they have exams, in September and May. And Mike was driving here , back and forth, which was insane. Then my father got sick, and we came back here. I didn't have a job. All those part time jobs are not a job."
That's when the couple decided to open their own business. They scraped together what resources they could. Originally they found a location across from K-Mart, but when the space in the Triphammer Mall opened they knew they had found their store. "This is a great location. Here's the thing, for a store like us people will come."
Inna Vishnevskaya
With foods that people are looking for, the word is getting out. One of the couple's guiding principals is to listen to their customers. "We are already getting good feedback, she says. "People say that our store is clean. It's also new. We always ask our customers, 'what would you like to have?' We have a list."
The other part of that is responding to what customers tell them. "We also tell them if our products are not good, let us know," Vishnevskaya says. "Because I need to know what I can do to improve it, or maybe not sell it any more." They have been providing Russian newspapers for customers at no charge, but now they are being asked to sell other newspapers. Vishnevskaya said she'd be making some calls to arrange that after our interview.
Meanwhile people are coming. "Kids come, high school kids, people who work at Cornell, Cornell professors. A lot of Jews come even though we're not kosher. But they buy bread, because our products don't have any preservatives. We try not to buy color added. It comes from Bulgaria, from Romania, from Poland." And the couple are enjoying having their own store. Vishnevskaya says, "We are very glad our business is going. We knew it would go."
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