What’s next for Andy’s Deli? Shlon family reflects on passing of beloved patriarch
Andy Shlon had an order to serve up the day he died.
The owner of the iconic Andy’s Deli in Five Points, Shlon was up early to fill a takeout order, just like he was on countless other days for the more than four decades he ran the deli on Greene Street.
Shlon collapsed at home and died on Jan. 14. before the order was complete. That’s when his wife Carole called their son, “Little” Andy.
The younger Andy Shlon and his brother Adam have worked at their dad’s deli since they were small. Even before Little Andy formally started working there as a teenager, he was always around the Five Points deli watching his parents work.
On Wednesday, 74-year-old Carole Shlon sat in the deli, as she often does for “moral support” after decades helping out herself. She watches and greets friends coming through the door on only the second full week that Andy’s has been opened since its namesake passed away.
Carole met the senior Andy when the Lebanese immigrant was working behind the counter at nearby Groucho’s Deli and she was a student at the University of South Carolina. The couple spent more than 50 years together as they raised their two sons with their own deli, which opened on this site in 1978.
Andy Shlon was an iconic figure in Columbia’s Five Points neighborhood. After working at nearby Groucho’s Deli, Shlon ran his own eponymous deli on Greene Street for more than 40 years.
An immigrant from Beirut, Lebanon, the elder Shlon became famous for greeting everyone who came through the door with a welcoming “Hello, my friend,” or “Hello, my dear.”
He was hailed by the city of Columbia in 2013 as someone “committed to both the City of Columbia and to making all our families his family as well.” When he passed away Jan. 14 at the age of 79, he was saluted by South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham on Twitter.
Behind the counter on Wednesday, Little Andy — he’s not a true junior, he explains, since he and his father had different middle names, like the two George Bushes — worked to make a sandwich, answer the phone, and sell a customer an Andy’s Deli t-shirt that’s suddenly become a hot item. In a sign of the times, he’s added a white face mask to the white ball cap and red apron his father wore so regularly.
Now 43, the younger Shlon has been working here since he was 14, except for a couple years as a teenager when he worked in an uncle’s St. Andrews bakery. He remembers busking tables with a high school friend who would stay late at the deli to avoid his parents’ curfew, until Mr. Andy closed up and drove him home.
Shlon was know for working long hours six days a week without fail, his apron and hat becoming fixtures of the city’s business community.
“We would tell him to go home and relax, and he’d just say, ‘I got it, bub’ and go on,” Little Andy says. “But my father always said if you love what you do, you won’t work a day in your life. And it was true.”
Besides their dad, Little Andy and his brother Adam would run the deli with three employees. Adam Shlon is out now caring for a 6-week-old baby at home, but he still finds time to come in and make the sauce, but does it at night as a pandemic precaution.
Both Shlon brothers came in at 7:30 the morning of their father’s death with a clear mission: complete his last order. Andy made the meal for pickup while Adam told customers at the door they were closed. After the order was picked up, they locked the door and hung a “Family Emergency” sign on the door.
Andy remembers he left and “walked the Saluda Riverwalk for a long time” that day.
Even before the deli reopened after Shlon’s funeral on Jan. 21, someone would come by each day to collect the flowers that piled up in front of the door, take them inside and plant them in a bucket of water. Many are still on display in the deli today, beside the sports memorabilia and old photos that line the walls.
The family received so many cards, it’s difficult to read them all, but Carole has tried, even when it makes her upset.
“They tell me, ‘don’t read ‘em,’ but I feel like I have to,” she said.
Working behind the counter now can feel odd, with such a big presence no longer in the room he had made his own.
“A customer came in, he didn’t know what was going on, and he said to me, ‘so you finally gave Andy a day off,’” Shlon said. “I cried that day.”
But the family has had the support of a loyal customer base and a lot of friends. Little Andy has been getting advice from an accountant, an old friend of his father. The accountant used to come in regularly to talk to the older Shlon, calling him “sweetness” and asking about Shlon’s blood sugar levels that day (he was a diabetic) before ordering a sweet tea with crushed ice.
Both Shlons used to joke with the man, who is missing part of a lung, that they would attend his funeral some day. Two weeks ago, it was the other way around.
Carole and Little Andy say they’ve been overwhelmed by the support and kindness they’ve received, and the younger Andy hopes to keep his father’s legacy alive at Andy’s Deli.
“Each day is, not easier, but a good deal better,” Shlon said. “As long as everybody keeps coming in here, I’m going to keep doing it.”
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