Bernstein’s Deli
Bernstein’s Deli has been a south end fixture for more than 30 years. Regulars come for a deli lunch, great take out in the grocery section (they are more than 30 kinds of soup in the freezer!), or a morning cup of coffee and meet up with friends. Marla Bernstein has been running the show, but, in the last several years, two of her sons, Aaron and Jason, have come on board as partners with their mom. They’ve introduced some new ideas to the classic deli model. Aaron Bernstein sits down with the Local Frequency to talk about some of the rewards and challenges of shaking things up, while making sure there’s always corned beef on rye on the menu.
Q: What were you doing before you joined your mother as partner in the business?
A: I have a mechanical engineering degree. I was working for an aerospace company in town.
Q: When and why did you decide to join the family business?
A: I officially joined in November 2012. When I was working I was never in this business. The hours were shorter here, and it was not accessible for me to be a patron of the family business. When I quit I started having lunch here and saw the multi-generational regular customers coming in everyday, but I saw a lot of opportunity to do more. Opportunities to increase the level of service. I saw a lot of low hanging fruit.
Q: What are some of the changes you’ve implemented?
A: First thing we did is open on Sundays. Then we started making South African beef jerky again. I hired an experienced chef, Beth Jacob, and she did some great things here…twists on things that you see in most delis. That helped increase our brunch crowd and our reputation. Like the Latke Stackers. The bison reuben burger was another of her ideas… If you look at the menu now compared to when I started it’s about 75% different.
Q: Obviously you still keep the classics.
A: No matter what we do, corned beef sandwich, soup, and borscht soup are our top sellers. If we stop putting that on the menu, they’ll stop coming.
House Corned Beef Reuben Deluxe Sandwich – Photo by Joey Visser 
Borscht – Photo By Joey Visser
Q: What are some of the new things you’ve added to the menu.
A: We do chicken fingers on pancakes which it isn’t deli food at all but it’s pretty synonymous with brunch food. We’re doing more vegan things like the Big Quinoa Salad. We’ve also really beefed up our dessert menus. We’ve made a new version of carrot cake – a three layer cake with candied walnuts turning it into a proper restaurant dessert. There’s lots more to come. We did Third + Bird this November and for two years we’ve done a canteen takeover at River Heights and Crescentwood Community Centres when they have their Winter Fest.
Q: What about some of the things in the grocery section?
A: That’s sort of driven by mom still. People tend to end with what they know and what they’re comfortable with. So she’s still lead for Friday night dinners and things like that. But we try to find interesting products and mix them in with the regular products so people discover new things. We’re carrying a line of packaged Peruvian products. Sometimes it’s hard to find the place of what people actually want to buy here.
Photos by Kristhine Guerrero
Q: Is it fun running a deli?
A: Ultimately it is. One of the reasons I got out of engineering was how impersonal it was. Here, we see people in the eye and there’s mutual empathy and 99% of the people have a good experience here… or at least that’s our perception of it. It’s rewarding. There’s always going to be staff conflicts, and people quitting and the occasional rude customer to deal with but overall it’s a very positive experience.
Q: Now you’re open at night? How’s that working? It must be a bit of a challenge when people know you so well for doing one specific thing?
A: We have of a bit of a different dinner menu which is the initiative of our head chef, Michael Fardoe, who was previously at the Gates, along with my brother Jason. You can get things like stuffed portobello mushroom, brisket, sweet and sour meatballs – we’re trying to bring dinner food, plated food, less of the diner fare at night. But we haven’t gotten away from the classics. But when we start to see the teenagers coming on their own, or young adults with a young baby you know you’re capturing future generations of customers. Our lunches are usually pretty full up. Breakfast and dinner we have a lot of opportunity to grab more and we are trying to figure out what it is that people want. For a couple of years, we stayed open later and we showed all the Jets games. We thought there was a hole in the neighbourhood for a place to go out to watch the Jets because everyone loves the Jets. A place where people could walk to, watch a period or the game, and have a drink because we serve alcohol. But it never really took off. We started to pump the breaks on that for now and re-evaluate. We might find a better strategy to do it in the future.
Q: So how would you describe the Bernstein brand?
A: We came up with a slogan: Classic and unexpected deli fare.
Thumbnail photo – Marla (left) and Aaron Bernstein – Photo by Joey Visser
