In the small town of San Luis Obispo, there lies a heap of small mom and pop shop liquor stores. These liquor stores happen to all be owned by Syrians, some of whom are even in the same family. Intriguing right? We thought so. So we decided to get to the bottom of who these guys really were and if they were actually all related. What we found- they might not ALL be related, but some of them are and they definitely all know each other. Our next question, why liquor and why San Luis Obispo?
The idea came to us when we were brainstorming a story topic. We tossed out a lot of ideas, mainly surrounding the theme of alcohol, (because we’re seniors and it was week 7). We came up with the idea to do an story on IPA’s, our generations beer. Who could we interview? Craft brew makers, students…and then it hit us! Liquor store owners! “You know the guy that owns Sandy’s is from Syria right?” I said. “Wait, they’re all Syrian!” Dan said. And the story was born.
We found the three most popular liquor stores by polling students. When we asked what was the top liquor store, Campus Bottle took the win. Next, we asked Reddit what the Cal Poly community would want to know about the story. The replies were mixed, but we for the most part got pretty positive feedback from the slo community during the entirety of our project.
We chose to interview owners from three different stores:
What I learned while doing the backgrounder section of the project was for a lack of better words- insane. So apparently, in 2011, this guy Tony Fadel and his family moved to Santa Maria from Syria. They settled in and have ever since called the Central Coast their home. They opened up a liquor store in Santa Maria which is now considered famous in the Syrian community. Tony and his family have helped 25 Syrian families immigrate to the US from Syria. After moving to the Central Coast, the families are offered the chance to work at one of the Fadel’s liquor stores as they acclimate to California and are able to go make a life for themselves on their own. This is the reason that many of the liquor stores on the Central Coast (including little San Luis Obispo) are Syrian owned.
When we first went to Campus Bottle the owner was not thrilled on the idea…
“You can write a story about the liquor store but not about me. It doesn’t matter I’m from Syria, it doesn’t matter that I’m from anywhere. You don’t talk about Syria.”
Lauren went on to ask “I understand completely. We more want to know, why SLO? and why liquor stores.”
His response, “I was a teacher in Syria for 30 years. I can’t teach here. Liquor stores is the easy job.”
After talking over with him more and getting him comfortable with the idea that we were more curious than interrogative, he agreed to do an interview. To know more about our interviews and profiles of the store owners, check out our project! Coming soon!