By ALEXA BERRY
Staff Writer
A local deli has plans to bring fresh sandwiches directly to their customers’ doorsteps. Maple Leaf Market, located at 323 Ontario St., will soon join Ubereats, allowing customers to order their sandwiches through an app and have them delivered to their door. Ryan Roth, the owner of Maple Leaf Market, hopes using the service will help the market gain more business. This could draw in a new crowd of people as well as customers that enjoy the deli but don’t live in walking distance from it. Although the market sells a variety of items; from cigarettes to chips to beer; Roth wants to place more emphasis on the deli. He wants the fresh sandwiches and deli products to be the main focus of the deli and he believes joining Ubereats will help with that. Roth hopes to work with Ubereats soon but doesn’t have a set date for when the market will begin using the app.
The menu behind the counter is small and features sandwiches named after football players such as “The Cruz” and “Romo,” both priced at $6.99. Customers can also order fresh Boars Head deli meats and cheeses. The list of specials may not be long, but before Roth took over, there wasn’t much of a menu at all. Even now, their online presence isn’t very strong. Up until a month ago, the most recent Facebook post was from 2017. While Roth is planning on updating the menu soon, making it longer is not his priority.
“I’ve thought about coming up with a five-item menu,” said Roth, “I don’t really have a menu-menu out there on the internet yet.”
Roth views not having a menu online as an advantage because it gives him more freedom to come up with a new menu and pricing for when the deli starts using Ubereats. Since there isn’t an official menu online yet, Roth can price his items keeping the 30 percent profit Ubereats takes in mind. When using the service, prices in store and online have to be transparent which means whatever price Roth has listed on the app and online must match the cost of the item in the store. In preparation for this, Roth is not only looking to tweak the things on the menu, but he is also figuring out how much he will need to raise the prices in order to profit.
Maple Leaf Market sits on the corner of Ontario and Morris street. It has served as a deli and convenience store for people living in the Pine Hills community for the past 40 years. The deli is open Monday thru Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., but the market usually remains open until 7 p.m. Roth typically works at the market himself, along with his father and sister.
The market is just a small piece of the overall property. It shares the building with a couple of apartments, owned by Ryan’s father, Eric Roth. They haven’t had success recently trying to rent out the upstairs apartments; a struggle Ryan Roth blames on the new housing units being built close to SUNY Albany. One of the apartments is vacant, and they are considering listing it on Airbnb as a way to profit off the empty space.
Finbar Maguire, a previous resident of one of the building’s apartments, was a regular at the market while he lived there and built a relationship with the owner. Although Maguire no longer lives just a few steps away, he would welcome the chance to eat another one of their deli sandwiches if it could be delivered to him.
“Ryan always knew what I wanted and would always make my sandwiches a little heavier,” said Maguire about the perks of living above the market.
In 1978, Eric Roth bought the small space and decided to open a deli. A real estate agent at the time, Roth saw the property as an opportunity he couldn’t refuse. Even when he opened the deli, he had no intentions of making it into a family business, but six years ago, Eric Roth passed his deli down to his son, Ryan, who has owned the place ever since. Most of the customers that come in have built a bond with both Eric and Ryan Roth. Some of these people have been coming to the store since its opening.
“We do have regular customers that have been coming in for the last 35 years,” said Eric Roth.
The smell of bacon fills the air outside the deli each morning as Ryan Roth gets ready for a busy day of greeting customers and making sandwiches. Single-handedly running a market six days a week means working long hours and having to juggle multiple tasks at once, but Roth doesn’t mind the hard work. In fact, he enjoys the time he spends at Maple Leaf Market.
“I like interacting with the locals, and being my own boss,” Roth said with a smile.
