The Reno

Things have changed quite a bit here at KJ.

We’ve got a new website,  a new blog,  a new name, and we did a complete renovation of the store. We thought it would be fun to show you a before and after of all the changes that have been made. This renovation, along with the other changes had been a long time coming. We are so excited about what has been accomplished, and are so appreciative of all the positive feedback it has garnered.

Our first formal renovation so to speak, was to change our name. Why did we change our name? It is a question we have been asked a fair bit and the reason simply is, we did not think ‘Kamil Juices’ explained who we were as much as it used to. We had countless questions asking what a Kamil Juice was. Do we make smoothies? Did we milk camels? Or even some enquiries like “I’d like an order of apple juice”…

Instead, we changed our name to better explain what we do, but we kept the KJ both as homage to Kamil Juices, and to the original owners: Kamil & Jerry.

Our first physical renovation was to change the front sign.

Looking back at that old sign…. yikes!

We had been wanting to replace it for years, but because we shared the awning with the other businesses here at the plaza, it was not something we could do until everyone was involved. We also want to take the opportunity to thank Sherwood Forest Investments for the great job they did on our exterior, as well as everyone else’s in the plaza.

Moving on to the inside of the operation.

We used to split the our retail space between fermentation and retail supplies. At the time, it was the only place where we could ferment. It was pretty disjointed and not the best use of the space. All of the wine bottling was done at the back of the store with all of our industrial sinks, winemaking equipment and storage. Keep in mind, bottling wine is something we do with our customers. The main reason we bottled at the back was because it was where our plumbing was. As part of the renovation, we installed plumbing at the front so that we are now able to bottle our wine there.

Now we bottle our wine at the front of the store where we fermented before.

We wanted to create an area where people felt more at home. Something that felt a lot less industrial. Not shown in the photo are a table and chairs for our customers to use. We’ve had our customers take advantage of this quite a bit. Some have brought in a smorgasbord of food to enjoy while bottling large batches of wine,  some have invited their entire family to join as well. We have lots of room for people to be social.

How about custom labelling?

Now for the front desk.

The front desk has had a number of changes over the years. We’ve included photos from 2014, 2015 , and 2016. Unfortunately we do not have photos from 2012-13 because it looked a lot less….elegant, and would shown an even more dramatic change!

Let’s look at the home supply section. This is one of the areas we felt needed the most amount of work.

One of the biggest eye sores was the fixtures we used to display all of our items for sale. They were old, beat up, and not very attractive. They were also very hard to move, and liked to scratch the floor! Speaking of the floor, we installed a new one too. It looks A LOT nicer.

This is the store now…

That about sums it up. We completely renovated our main room, and have moved all wine production into the back room where we used to bottle wine. The main parts of the reno were completed in the early summer, and we have been slowly adding other items and fixtures to it. We really appreciate all the kind words we have received since we did the renovation. It was a lot of work to do, but it has been so rewarding.

Oh, and in case you would like to hire the craftsman who did all the work. It was none other than our own Adrian Trochta. 

The finished product!