Standom Smallgoods closing shop in Adelaide Central Market and Newton

A beloved Central Market icon will trade for the last time on Saturday after almost 50 years. And two sister shops in Adelaide’s east will soon follow suit.

A celebrated Adelaide butcher is bidding farewell to its Central Market home after decades amid what owners have called “the most difficult retail trading environment in 30 years”.

Standom Smallgoods’ stall will trade for the last time this Saturday after 47 years, before handing the keys over to Fleurieu Milk Company next week.

Standom will close another outlet at Newton Central as well as its sister store, Barossa Fine Foods, at Newton. Both those stores will close at the end of August.

Standom Smallgoods was bought out by the Knoll family, owners of Barossa Fine Foods, in 2013.

A selection of Standom items will be available through Barossa Fine Foods’ Central Market stall.

Original Standom owner Stan Ciechanowicz, who passed away in 2015, was inducted into the National Sausage King Hall of Fame, having won the prestigious national title several times.

After managing the market stall for 17 years, Sandy Monz told The Advertiser she believed producers and wholesalers like her own were being crowded out by eateries and takeaway shops.

Standom Smallgoods founder Stan Ciechanowicz was in 2010 the first inductee into the Australian Sausage King Hall of Fame. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

“It’s become more of a social gathering place,” Ms Monz said of the Central Market.

“All the shops are feeling it … it feels like people don’t look at the window anymore, they just go straight to the food shops.”

She also said “people aren’t spending as much as they used to” and she observed fewer customers on traditionally busy Friday nights.

“It’s quite sad but inevitable … we’ve got customers who have been shopping here for 40 years, but what can you say to them?” she said.

“If you go to the supermarket, most of the meat there comes wrapped in plastic, but you come here and it’s all freshly sliced, you can smell it in the air – you just can’t beat it.”

Barossa Fine Foods owner and former MP Stephan Knoll said the company had “worked to ensure that all staff have been placed in other parts of the business”.

Cost increases and “softening consumer demand” were both to blame for the closures.

“The manufacturing and wholesaling parts of our business are doing well, but it is increasingly difficult for specialty retailers to make the model stack up,” Mr Knoll said.

“It will take many good years of trading to unwind the cost of doing business impacts that we have experienced in the retail side of our business over the past two years.”

The Standom Smallgoods brand also has stores at St Clair and Gepps Cross which will continue to operate.

On Wednesday, Laksa House in the Central Market Plaza also announced it was facing certain closure after 25 years of trading.

It is one of the last remaining outlets in the centre’s food court as renovations get under way as part of major works.

But an eye-watering cost to re-open after extensive redevelopments – in the order of $300,000 – means the hole-in-the-wall store will likely shut in the next three months.

Originally published as Standom Smallgoods closing shop in Adelaide Central Market and Newton