New owners with old connections take over Gray’s Grocery

Jeff Green | Jun 03, 2010

After 26 years during which their store was open over 9,350 days and closed for 80 days all told, Doug and Kathy Wolsey have turned over the keys of Gray’s Grocery store to Jonathan DesRoche.

“The store has been good to us. We’ve raised two children here, sent them to university, paid our bills; we have no complaints,” said Kathy Wolsey from Gray’s Grocery last week.

Through those years Jonathan DesRoche has been a familiar presence at the store, as a high school buddy of Doug and Kathy’s son. “He was always here after school, joking around and even helping out sometimes,” Kathy said.

So, when word came to the Wolseys that Jonathan, who works for Ontario Hydro, was interested in purchasing the store, they were only too happy to receive his offer, which they eventually accepted.

Gray’s Grocery is small store, and the trick to profitability is to make sure that each square foot of display space brings in a profit, according to Doug Wolsey.

The store was already a local institution when the Wolseys bought it in 1984 from Alison Robinson (whose maiden name was Gray). Alison had bought the store from her parents Jim and Lucy Gray. Maude Webster originally opened the store many years earlier.