Spiro Kokanas - you’d be hard-pressed to find a member of the Lloydminster community who didn’t know the name, he’s been a pillar of the community for over half a century.
Spiro arrived in Canada at 16-years-old. His father, who had left Greece to go to Brazil, had been sponsored to come to Canada by family. Eventually, his father sponsored him to come to Canada. He went from Greece to Halifax by boat before taking a train to Saskatoon.
He spent his formative years in Saskatoon working in restaurants, eventually marrying his wife, Tina.
Spiro, and his brothers, Jim, and Bill, were looking for a business to run.
“They were looking for a community to find a business to run, something they could have as their own, the three brothers were looking to branch out together,” said Spiro’s daughter Maria Kokonas.
The first foray out of Saskatoon wasn’t the right fit for them. They continued to look for opportunity elsewhere, and eventually, the young family found the right fit.
“Lloydminster came on the radar, there was maybe 2,500 people here at that time?” asked Maria. Spiro added, “it was not a city at that time, it was close to 3,000 people.
“It was not very big, the three young bucks came to Lloydminster,” said Maria.
The family arrived in the border city in 1970 and were ready to work.
“Right where Wendy’s is, there was a gas station,” said Maria. Spiro quickly clarified, “a Shell gas station.”
“In those years they put a restaurant in the gas station, we came for that purpose, we took that over,” said Spiro.
The family suffered a tragedy halfway through the decade.
“He (Jim) died in ‘75 and we stayed from there on,” said Spiro. “We went downtown where Cliff Rose is and we opened up a restaurant.”
The family sold the Ranchero, their first restaurant in Lloydminster, and opened the 3K Family Restaurant.
Unlike their first adventure as owners, the second family restaurant fell on hard times. The economy during this period started to decline and Spiro says that wasn’t the only issue.
“There were other things involved, we thought we were big shots, nobody wanted to work, so it went bust,” recounted Spiro. “One morning I came to open the restaurant and the lock was changed.”
“We lost the business, everything, and the bank, the credit union took our house,” said Spiro. “Everything was gone.”
Maria pointed out it was, “Collateral, right.”
Spiro began his hunt to find a job and quickly hit a wall.
“Nobody will hire me, I was over-qualified,” said Spiro “It was in the paper they were looking for cooks, I would go and ask but nobody would hire me.”
An interesting point along the Spiro timeline is despite losing the house they hadn’t moved out.
“We stayed in the house, we were paying rent, $700 a month,” Spiro explained. “My wife was working, but I couldn’t find a job.”
When Spiro went to pay rent for the house, he was greeted by Peter Gulak who had a proposition that left him speechless.
“Peter came from his office, and he says do you want a business,” explained Spiro. “Peter, I said, you must be joking, with what? With buttons?”
“He says ‘don’t worry about the money.’”
A café on 50 St. was looking to sell, which Spiro described as being about 25 feet wide.
“It was nothing to brag about, but to me at that time it was good,” said Spiro.
Despite the place looking to sell for $30,000, Spiro eventually acquired it for $20,000 and had an extra $2,000 to buy what he needed.
“I shouldn’t say that was the bank that gave me that money or was it impersonal?” Spiro questioned.
Ultimately the $22,000, which may have come from Gulak or from the bank, was Spiro’s and he was ready to open his new restaurant.
The newly Spiro-run restaurant, the Lighthouse, was off to the races, and it grew considerably.
“They were there until 1989 or ‘89,” said Maria.
They sold the Lighthouse after growing the business considerably. Spiro says he doesn’t remember exactly how much he got for it but thinks it’s in the ballpark of $70,000.
The Kokonas family had another interesting run-in at the bank.
“I went to pay the rent for the house, and he says you want your house back? I said I don’t have money to pay,” said Spiro.
He explains he was told the rent he was paying would be put as a down payment and when he ended up with $5,000, the bank would turn that over to him. Spiro got the house back and was fresh out of his previous restaurant venture.
“We’d done well in there, then we took the money, and we came down to the 7-Eleven,” he said.
The Meridian Plaza would be his next restaurant destination.
“We had a bay and one door, which seated I think 25 people, it was little,” said Maria. “At the time it was on the outskirts of Lloydminster, this area had not been developed.”
She explained there wasn’t much in the area south of Highway 16. There may have been a few homes, but most of the land remained empty or used for farming.
“We took a gamble to go there, there were other businesses starting to come down to that end,” said Maria.
The store at the time wasn’t very busy until they had an idea.
“We weren’t very busy, my brother, who was a university student in Edmonton at the time had suggested, we’re Greek, we make pizza,” explained Maria.
“But it was the same time Family Pizza was coming in,” Spiro pointed out.
The family had an idea how they would pack their store with hungry customers.
“We brought two-for-one pizza to Lloydminster,” said Maria.
Maria says with the looming threat of Family Pizza coming in across the road, the family got to work figuring out a menu. They ran into a roadblock when they realized they didn’t have the money to get the word out across the whole city.
“We printed a menu out, we bought the phone number 4241,” explained Maria.
The number was a play on the “for two pizzas for one price.”
“Dad took menus to apartment buildings, we’d just drop menus wherever we would go,” said Maria.
“We couldn’t keep up, the phone was ringing, we literally had to take the phone off because we couldn’t keep up.”
The demand for the two-for-one pizza was massive. People came in and packed the small store by the Meridian Plaza to get their homemade two-for-one pizza.
“We didn’t have the infrastructure for what we had done,” explained Maria.
She says people were coming in and the business was gaining traction in the community.
“Felt like we belonged, we were in the right spot, businesses were starting to come down that way, we were getting busier, and a bay opened beside us,” said Maria.
The chance to expand the small restaurant was something the family jumped on. The previously small restaurant that could seat 25 people had grown.
“We had a pretty great takeout business, we needed to move the till to the new area, now we got two doors,” said Maria.
The business, according to Maria, had the space to offer a smoking and non-smoking side as well as space for their sit-down and takeout business.
“We were busy at lunch, we were busy at supper, and it was just enough. It was a great place to eat, it was a great place to get your pizzas,” said Maria. “We had never lost that family value at Spiro’s.”
The dining room grew two more times, eventually sitting 135 people. It was also the family’s first experience with a banquet room. Though the front of house continued to grow, the kitchen never grew. Then the next opportunity presented itself.
“One day Bill Musgrave came in, he started talking to us and he said, ‘you know what, I need a restaurant where my hotel is,’” explained Maria.
“The way he said it, I want you to build me a restaurant on my parking lot,” clarified Spiro.
Maria and Spiro weren’t sure how to take the proposal until Musgrave came back.
“I remember the day he picked us up in his Suburban, he brought us to this hotel and there’s a meeting room on the second floor,” said Maria. “He had the plans drawn for the restaurant, he opened the curtains and the plans and said, ‘right there is your restaurant.’”
Maria also explained the offer was to get the family there, whether Musgrave built the restaurant, the Kokonas family leased it, or they built it themselves, Musgrave wanted the family in that location.
At the time Spiro was nearing his mid-60s and the conversation came up about the future of the restaurant. The thought came up to shut down the restaurant, but Maria had a different idea.
“I remember saying no, no, no, no, no I’ll do it I’ll take it, I couldn’t say those words fast enough,” said Maria.
She was willing to do what it took to successfully run the business. With her father by her side, she dove into the new restaurant and opportunity.
With every opportunity comes risk, and in this case, they still had three years left on their previous agreement at the Meridian Plaza.
“The day we opened this restaurant, she (Lucky Garden) took over the other,” said Spiro.
The lease remained and the tenant at the time paid the family, if anything were to happen it would fall back on the Kokanas family to foot the bill.
“If she didn’t, if she wasn’t able to make it, it would come back to us, it’s quite a gamble for us,” said Maria.
It did work out for the family; Lucky Garden remains in the Meridian Plaza.
Looking back on the journey, Maria says the most important thing was never losing the family values in the restaurant.
“It’s been a ride. We’ve rode some highs and some very lows, it’s been an adventure and we have always maintained that family restaurant image, we’ve never lost it,” she said.
Spiro, reflecting on his time here, has a deep admiration for not only the city, but Canada. His love for Canada was expressed through a poem he wrote.
“This is a story, my friend for everyone to hear, the story about Canada and everyone in here, we are all Canadians no matter what the breed. English, French, Indigenous, Germans, Arabs, Greeks. So, we should not discriminate our fellow countrymen. We should all live in peace because we are all Canadians. Canada is a blessed land and here is our home,” Spiro recited holding back tears.
“I can’t even say that without crying, we are all Canadians no matter where we’re from. I wrote the story from my heart and truly believe I am an immigrant, and here I chose to live,” he said, finishing the poem he wrote called “The Heart of an Immigrant.”
Spiro has given back to the community he holds dear with a Thanksgiving dinner, which he says was an idea his wife came up with.
“I went to the Anglican Church, they have a hall and I told them what I wanted to do,” said Spiro. “They donated the hall, first year approximately we had maybe 150 people,”
“I went around asking businesses if they can donate anything, because we didn’t really have much of our own to do the whole thing.”
He said soon they had people bringing more and more and donations ramped up, it was more than they could use. On top of the increase in donations, they also saw a large spike in people wanting to volunteer.
They continued their tradition of giving back to the community with Thanksgiving dinners for 30 years before turning it over to a local charity to continue the tradition.
Residents of Lloydminster are familiar with the 50 Ave. restaurant, enjoying a taste of authentic Greek food from a family who has remained a pillar in the community over five decades later. Getting the chance to meet the man behind the name, and the successor to the restaurant, Maria.
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