​​Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle

If you haven’t heard of Rooster Mafia you’ve been missing out on one of Osoyoos’ latest foodie sensations that has been driving social media chatter non-stop practically since the deli opened in February.

The Portuguese Canadian deli market is operated by the wife and husband duo of Jasmine and Marco Calisto.
But before we go any further, why ‘Rooster Mafia’? The rooster comes from the folk tale of the Rooster of Barcelos, an easily recognizable icon of Portuguese culture, explains Jasmine.

She says the rooster can be found on everything from pottery to packaging and is never identical – different flowers, different hearts and so on. “The mafia part came about because we were looking for another word for family and loyalty, so we kind of played around with different words and this one just had a great ring to it.”

The deli market is the product of many things, including culture, family, life experiences and years-in-the-making business plan that evolved no more so than during the last couple of pandemic years.

Although the pair come to the food service business from the seemingly contrary sectors of mental health and masonary, Jasmine’s mental health job invovled teaching food skills and cooking for a house of 20 people.

And while Marco’s masonry experience obviously bears no relation to food service, he grew up in a family deeply involved with food not just from the cultural side, but through operating restaurants, delis and catering businesses.
The two are also not new to the food industry having operated food trucks and other various food-related enterprises on and off over the years.

The two returned to Osoyoos four years ago, a community where Marco’s family had many years ago migrated to from Portugual and where he had grown up. “We like to say that we’re local because my husband grew up here and we feel local at this point, but we get corrected sometimes,” she laughs.

Rooster Mafia essentially represents the intersection of all of this. “This was a plan that we had written probably over the course of the last six or seven years and it changed obviously when Covid happened,” says Marco. The original business plan had them opening a bistro café on Main Street at the former Bits and Bites Café. Luckily for them they decided against it as shortly thereafter the COVID-19 curtain fell with a thud.

They again put their plans on ice and Marco took a job that saw him travelling around Alberta and B.C. through the pandemic period which required the whole family to quarantine every time he came home. That was the clarion call as it turns out.
“We felt that creating our own opportunity was the best option because I think living in the South Okanogan you kinda need to make your own opportunities here. And we saw a hole that we could have a business like this to fill and that’s kind of the direction we went in,” he says.

With COVID-19 restrictions firmly disrupting the food and beverage sector Marco says they revisited their business plan one more time.
“My passion has always been in the food and service industry so I’ve always known that at some point in my life this was going to happen,” he says.

He notes that for quite some time there has been social media chatter around the need for a deli in Osoyoos. “So we went with that model moving forward because we want to fill a hole we want to create a business that’s going to be needed in town, not just another business.”

“We basically said let’s just eliminate anything that has Covid restrictions and see what we have left. So we stripped everything down and said, ‘well, okay what we have left is basically a market and so what can we do to expand from there?’”
The answer to that was to become a ‘deli market’, rather than a restaurant or café in part because under that classification they were considered an essential service.

Starting in February – when the future was still quite uncertain and restrictions were still in place – they went with a ‘grab-and-go’ concept.

“The idea is for longevity, to be in it for the long haul, not just another flash in the pan which happens a lot in the South Okanogan,” Marco says. He laughs however that it’s become more of a ‘market deli’ than the originally concept of ‘deli market’.

The growing emphasis on deli is in part because of the popularity of their prepared food, from the Portuguse-inspired salami or pulled pork and beef sandwiches, to their hot lunch specials like Portuguese steak sandwiches with sautéed onions and peppers.