Some say working with the public can be a thankless job, while others derive a sense of pride in it.

The latter is definitely the case for Helen and Steve Moon who’ve owned and operated Steven’s Groceries at the corner of Bathurst and Follis since 2007.

The convenience store, which is open from 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week, offers customers a soup-to-nuts range of products from Christmas trees in December to cut flowers and plants in summer to sewing needles, laundry soap and even obscure little finds that you won’t find in other stores.

Classical music and kind words of welcome greet customers who enter the store. The space is surprisingly clean and tidy given its abundant stock. Helen and Steve enjoy marking many holidays and celebrations such as Canada Day and St. Patrick’s Day by decorating their shop with appropriate flags, balloons and banners. It’s easy to see why the Toronto Star voted the store as one of the best in the city.

But Helen, a native of Seoul, Korea, credits her success back to her customers.

“Our relationship with the customers is important,” says Helen, 55, who was a professor of art education in Korea. “Every customer is my friend. We give them poinsettias every Christmas and they give me Christmas cards, and they give me pictures of their families and their pets and we put them up in the store.”

Because of the store’s location in Seaton Village, not far from the University of Toronto’s stomping grounds, many of its customers are students, professors, doctors and lawyers – all very nice people, says Helen, and the reason why “we are a good match.”

Helen and Steve and their two grown children moved to Canada 13 years ago. Finding this corner store with the name Steven already on the sign was a happy coincidence for the Moons, who had been looking to purchase a convenience store for some time.

The store, which is adjacent to Freeman Real Estate Ltd., was the brainchild of my grandparents Max and Sarah Hartstone, who decided to open a dry goods store there in 1959. Named after their first grandson, the store – known then as Steven’s Milk – served the needs of the neighbourhood’s largely working-class immigrants. As its customers changed and evolved so, too, did the store moving its merchandise into organics and specialty foods.

Sarah, Max and their son Marvin worked longs hours at the store, which was open till midnight seven days a week. Max died at 75 in 1982, while my grandmother lived to the ripe old age of 98. Marvin decided to close down the store in the mid nineties after suffering a serious heart attack. His retirement and his crusty but kind manner were celebrated in a Toronto Star column.

Steven’s Milk provided many young men in the neighbourhood with their first jobs as Max and Sarah liked to hire customers, even those who had shoplifted in the store, to help with the endless chores associated with running a corner store.

Because my grandfather virtually lived in the store, it was there that he forged relationships, ate meals and performed odd jobs that most people performed at home. A tight relationship with Sealtest Milk executives led to daily milk-less lunches in the back of the store. On the menu? What else but pastrami, herring and good old wholesome scotch.