By Tania Phillips
Pasquale “Percy” Pugliese is really enjoying his retirement – mind you he was only one day into.
However, the man behind the well-known Percy’s Fruit Market in Wood Street, Warwick said after 30 years of selling fruit around the region he was looking forward to a break, or his version of it anyway.
“Today is my first official day of retirement and it feels good, I’m with my son and so far, so good,” Pasquale laughed.
It’s quite a change from early mornings and days in the market, but the son of Italian immigrants is making the most of it after three decades of selling fruit. Growing up on the family orchard Pasquale chose to make his own way and not follow his dad. But the fruit industry was definitely in his blood.
“I’ve been in the fruit industry practically all my life but the fruit shop itself, I probably owned for about twenty years,” he said.
“Prior to that I was actually going door-to-door with a fruit and vegetable truck. All up it’s been a bit over thirty years in the area.
“I must admit at the start I was just thinking of starting my own business and I thought what can do that’s depression proof, something I could do for myself, as my own business.”
He said he reasoned that people always had to eat and it doesn’t matter how tough times get and “if I go door-to-door, I know I’m good with people and if I can win their trust….”
And that’s how it all started,” Pasquale admitted.
From that simple start, things went from strength-to-strength – not that he thought he’d be doing it for thirty years.
“Oh no I didn’t expect that,” he laughed.
“To be really honest with you, it was a means to an end, but then I really enjoyed it, all my customers became my friends, one thing led to another. I ended up buying the fruit shop and then we were doing both – the country runs and the fruit shop. We changed the runs over a bit though. When I was going door-to-door, it was pretty labour intensive and cumbersome in the sense that you can only serve so many an hour. So I started setting up in little towns behind pubs. Everybody knew that I was there on a particular day and they’d come to me. Where I was only serving five or six an hour, I ended up serving twenty or thirty an hour.”
Part and parcel of running a fruit shop was the early morning runs to Brisbane for the fruit markets.
“You’d have to get up early to go to Brisbane and get a load, but I was pretty blessed really because I use to do it all myself, load my own trucks,” he said. “Towards the end I was getting refrigerated transport to bring it up and it worked in well.
“I still had to go to Brisbane, but that’s part and parcel of being in the fruit game, early morning starts, it’s no different to being a baker. It never worried me, I didn’t mind getting up early. In fact, that was some of my best days, driving down to Brisbane, no traffic, no nothing and you just contemplate and think. It was great.”
He said he made a lot of friends in his time in the fruit shop, serving generations of Warwick customers – women coming in with their babies and their babies growing up and bringing their own babies in.
“It’s a bit mind boggling,” Pasquale laughed.
“I can walk down the street and run into different ones and they come up to you and give you a big hug, it’s just great. Even young ones who have moved away from the town. If ever they’re in the town, they’ll come up to the fruit shop and say you don’t remember me but you use to serve my mum, you used to put me on the mushroom box and give me grapes. It was just one of those things, I didn’t set out to do what I did but it’s just all come together.
“I loved it, it was a good honest way of making a living, you could be as generous as. It taught me a lot in life, the more generous you are in life, the more things come back to you. Not that you do things for that reason, you do things out of the kindness of your heart and then because you’ve done it, it is almost if the universe repays you in other ways, we’ve been very blessed.”
And while Pasquale and his wife Glenis are planning to get a caravan next year and do trips away they will be back. They still have Glenis’ Glenrose Patchwork shop, their B&B and of course Pasquale’s beloved garden.
“We are looking forward to kicking it back and taking it easy, I never thought I’d say that, I’m but I’m a bit of a work-a-holic,” he laughed.
“Well, I say that now, in this interview, maybe in six months time I might have a different outlook but I’m loving my first day.”
Not that it will be all putting his feet up.
“I’ve got four acres of nice garden and with all the rain it’s got a little wild and wooly. I’m very grateful the caravan we’ve ordered isn’t coming straight away because it will give me a chance to get my gardens under control.”
