Business: George’s Fruit & Vegetables

Business Address

Story

Simon, Joseph and Keith George’s parents came to Australia from Lebanon in April 1926. Growing up in Casino, New South Wales, they worked with their parents in their café and fruit and vegetable store. As a consequence, sourcing and trading fruit and vegetables was something the brothers knew a lot about.

After moving to Brisbane, Simon and Joseph realized there was money to be made collecting and selling potato, onion and wheat bags. After two years of collecting/buying bags from farmers and selling them on, they made enough money to buy land in West End and build two houses, and also to start a fruit shop in Boundary Street West End. Their brother Keith joined them. They worked hard : ‘We worked seven days a week and we were determined. We had a good work ethic and we kept going with work, day and night, and some nights we’d get home eight o’clock, nine o’clock at night’.

The business did very well:

…in the 50s, it [West End]was a busy little place….We used to have our little shop there, the first, when we first opened up. We used to have eight people working in there serving…because we got so busy. There’d be people…five deep in the front of the shop, waiting to get served.

After twelve months, they opened a second shop also in Boundary Street. Eventually, they had a chain of nine or ten shops, George’s Fruit and Vegetables, throughout Brisbane, including at Holland Park, Moorooka, Camp Hill, Rosalie and Lutwyche. They bought and redeveloped the site of their first shop on Boundary Street, expanding it to include a depot to supply all their fruit stores. Later the business expanded to include supplying fishing fleets and passenger ships and also exporting, including to Groote Eylandt and Echo Islands and New Guinea.

References

NAA: SP1121/1, Gittany, Peter George.

Joseph George, interview with Anne Monsour, Brisbane, 2019.

Mary Barakat, interview with Anne Monsour, Brisbane, 2019.