When John "Johnny" Neeleman died in 1990, grandson David Neeleman told the funeral congregation that his own entrepreneurial instincts had been honed at age 9 behind the checkout counter of Miniature Market, a 24/7 "convenience" store that his grandfather had opened in 1951, when "7-Eleven" was just a couple of numbers.
David was president of Morris Air when his grandfather died, and since then he has launched several start-up companies, including the one he now heads, New York-based JetBlue Airways. Clearly, the lessons he learned at the original Miniature Market — a Salt Lake landmark at 600 South and State Street once dubbed "the biggest little store in America" by Argosy magazine — were taken to heart.
Or maybe it's in the genes. David's grandpa opened and personally ran nine businesses during his life, several of them at the same time.
Johnny Neeleman was an entrepreneur back when most of us had never heard the word and certainly couldn't spell it. The son of a Dutch immigrant, he dropped out of school after ninth grade and began his retailing career at age 12, during the Great Depression, when he got a job unloading bread trucks for Fisher Baking Co. His pay? A loaf of stale bread that he took home to help feed his family.
Many Salt Lakers remember Miniature Market, or M&M, as I thought of it, as one of the most valuable businesses in town. Where else could you go and get a quart of milk and a loaf of bread at two in the morning? More important, where else could you go and get a three-course dinner on one of Johnny's "Kaiser" rolls?
I had grown up thinking a sandwich was a piece of bologna between two slices of Wonder bread. With his Dutch Treat, Turkey Gobbler, Sheep Herder, Landsman and many others, Johnny taught me that sandwiches could be heroic long before I had heard the term "hero" sandwich.
Gary Neeleman, Johnny's son (and David's father), who works three floors above me in the Deseret News building for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, recalls how his dad catered to college students, truck drivers, cops working the "graveyard" shift — everyone who was out and about when most of the city slept.
Johnny cashed checks when no one else would, delivered groceries to shut-ins, and, even though he seemed to have crammed everything anyone could want into that 1,200 square feet of space (it wasn't called "Miniature Market" for nothing), he would occasionally have a customer who wanted something he didn't have.
No problem, recalls Gary. "Dad would stall the customer with a doughnut and a cup of coffee or cold drink while I was sent to the back room with a wink to 'look' for the item. I then bolted out the back door to the Safeway store a few blocks away to buy it and bring it back. Dad hated to tell anyone he didn't have what they needed."
Johnny went on to open two other Miniature Markets, two Pine Cone restaurants downtown and in Sugar House, the Clock Cafe downtown, the Chubby Lunch in Sugar House, the Skylark and the Cardinal.
All of them are gone now save one, Johnny's second Miniature Market at 300 East and 3300 South, and it will be razed next month by the family, ending one era but beginning another. A new M&M has been built alongside the old one and will be run by his granddaughter, Lisa, and her husband, Mike Wilson, this one with 5,000 square feet of space (huge by Grandpa Neeleman's standards), gas pumps, a car wash, a full line of groceries, "Hottie" doughnuts made in-house and, yes, really great sandwiches.
Johnny would be proud. His wife, Ethel, 90, still is.
E-MAIL: max@desnews.com