After almost 20 years of dishing up breakfast, lunch and dinner, the owner of Krickets Café is hanging up his apron.
John Tzoumas, 72, has sold the property located on Liberton Drive to John Engel, owner of Mission Fun & Games. Sunday was the last day of business for Krickets.
“I'm getting up there in age and I just have to hang it up,” said Tzoumas, who came to Canada from Greece in 1957. “It's time to have a little bit of time for myself and my wife and spend some time with my family and grandkids.”
Tzoumas bought the land and started Krickets in 1993. Along with his wife Helen and with occasional help from his children, Tzoumas spent the next 19 years serving up meals for local families, turning Krickets into a favourite restaurant for many.
“I met a lot of people here, a lot of good people in St. Albert and I thank them for their business and everything else and I'm going to miss them,” Tzoumas said. “But life moves on.”
Tzoumas decided six months ago to retire and put the Krickets property up for sale. That caught the interest of Engel, who was looking for new space for his store, located on McKenney Avenue.
The sale was finalized earlier this month. Engel will get the keys to the property on April 1 and after conducting some renovations, will re-open Mission Fun & Games at the new location sometime between June 1 and August 1.
“We've been looking for a new home for five years,” Engel said. Despite the move from Mission to Liberton Drive, Engel said the name will stay the same.
“There was a thought to changing it but 13 years up here with the same name, it will be easier to find us.”
The new property represents a roughly 10-to-15-per-cent increase in available floor space over what Mission Fun & Games currently has in its four bays in Mission.
“The land is a tremendous asset and we're hopeful if we do well there, there will be an opportunity to expand further,” Engel said.
With the move, Engel plans to introduce more products. The store will start offering a line of model planes, tanks, boats and ships, which could expand to include remote control models, depending on sales. Engel also hopes to expand the store's line of war machine miniatures, as well as double the line of its jigsaw puzzles.
Engel will be keeping the two serviced washrooms for patrons who come by for gaming evenings, but, to the disappointment of some, will be removing all of the kitchen equipment.
“Some of our customers are disappointed we won't be offering hot pizzas,” Engel joked.
Engel also anticipates hiring more staff once the store opens in its new location. The store will also keep its Gamealot gaming convention in support of the St. Albert Food Bank and Community Village, which is held every September.
For his part, besides spending more time with his family, Tzoumas is looking forward to some travelling once he's retired.
“I'll go back home to Greece for a while and travel a bit. See the rest of the family there,” he said.
