Ben Ryder Howe is probably the last person you would expect to be the owner of a Korean Deli. Mainly because he's from New England and not Korean. But in 2002, he and his wife move from Brooklyn to Staten Island to live with his Korean in-laws in an attempt to save money for the future. Soon after moving, Howe and his wife decide to go into business with his mother in-law, buying a deli in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. In My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store, Howe tells the story about his experience as a first-time deli owner.

So, you're working at The Paris Review, your wife is a corporate attorney and you seem to have a lot of potential life-roads to take. But you decide to move in with your Korean in-laws in Staten Island and open a deli? Why on earth would you do that? My guess is that ninety-nine per cent of the people who move in with their parents do it thinking the same thing we did, which is, “This is only temporary.” In our case, what brought us to that point was that the lease on our apartment had run out, and we had decided to buy a place instead. So we moved into my mother-in-law’s basement for what was supposed to be a few months while we house-hunted. That didn’t go so well, but as a result of being there we ended up saving some money, and people do crazy things when they look at a pile of money for too long. We bought a convenience store.

Why did your mother in-law want a deli? What made you settle on the one that you eventually purchased in Boerum Hill? Well, looking back, sometimes I wonder whether we wanted one for her more than she wanted one herself. She’d owned a business when she was younger and knew exactly how hard it is. My wife and I, on the other hand, had no idea, and like a lot of people who’ve never actually owned one but spend a lot of time in delis and other types of stores, we thought, “How hard can it be? I can make a cup of coffee. I can make a sandwich.”

What kind of tension did you experience at home and at work with your wife's family? Was there a difference in your work ethics? Korean-Americans who came here in the Eighties tended to gravitate toward service-intensive professions like delis and dry cleaners, and I think when you’re in one of those day-in, day-out, round-the-clock professions, you develop a phobia of weakness, of giving in for one second, because if you do then you might be tempted to do it again, and then all bets are off. That attitude was foreign to me.

How did the neighborhood feel about your ownership of the store and of any changes you made? They welcomed us, as long as we didn’t change a single thing about the store. The deli had been there forever, and had had a couple of owners, but I’m pretty sure that if you went back ten years, or maybe longer, you would have found the same products on the shelves, the same stickers clogging the windows, the same gum spots dotting the sidewalk.

We did not come in and say, “Everything has to change, and so long to anyone who cares.” But I’m sure that’s what it seemed like. In our defense, it takes a lot of spine to say, “I’m making very little money and devoting my life to this place, and yet I’m going to honor the neighborhood tradition of having a public viewing of ‘Predator 2’ in my store every night.” It is a business, after all, and a lot of people when they go to the store to buy milk don’t want to fight through a gauntlet of guys smoking vanilla-scented cigars. Plus, some of the changes were things we had no control over — for instance, we came in just as the city made people smoke outside. But the basic thing is, you mess with certain places at your peril, and we did.

While working at the deli, you also worked at The Paris Review. How did you manage to balance the two jobs? Were there any similarities between the jobs? I had publishing hours, so even on the days when I worked both jobs, I could usually recover the next day. Sometimes I would neglect what I was supposed to be doing at the review or the deli and get extremely stressed out. I tried doing some of my editing at the deli, but it was hopeless — you can’t really proofread a Tobias Wolff interview when people keep asking you to issue them a lottery ticket. They’re not compatible professions. But they are similar institutions in a way, and it was helpful at the time to think about what made them tick, since they were both facing existential questions, especially after George Plimpton died. They’re both small, informal and social. They’re both anchored in the past — they don’t have as much freedom to change as they might like. They both serve a lot of alcohol.

Your commute occasionally consisted of traveling from Staten Island, where you lived, to the Review in Manhattan and to your store in Boerum Hill. How did you manage that ridiculous commute? Staten Islanders in general spend so much time commuting that I think some of them have to mentally check out when they’re doing it or they’ll go crazy. For instance, I once asked my father-in-law how many hours a week he spends on BQE (he’s an HVAC repairman and lives on Staten Island; his clients are in other boroughs) and he just looked at me and laughed, didn’t even try to answer. It was like the question didn’t compute. There are people on Staten Island who’ve spent multiple years of their lives commuting. The best way to deal with it is to pretend it’s not happening.

Do you think bodegas are being driven out by stores like Duane Reade?
At my most paranoid I have probably envisioned executives at Duane Reade gathering around a table and plotting to wipe out all the mom and pop stores, but honestly, I don’t think it’s their fault. The environment favors chains. Rents are high, fines are high, and the cost of doing business includes being able to navigate a crushingly effective bureaucracy. Small businesses really struggle with that. You need access to capital, a thick profit margin, an in-house lawyer, and maybe for your uncle to own the building your store is in.

What's your stance on bodega cats? We inherited a cat with our store and were fined mercilessly for having him. He did his job — I never saw a single mouse. But he was gradually turning the same color as our linoleum floor, like a moth, and he loved to sleep on the snack cakes. (Who wouldn’t? Imagine sleeping on a giant Suzy Q.) So we tried to bring him home for a bath, and when we did we realized that Tiger (who had once been orange like a real tiger) had never been outside our store, and the look on his poor face when we did — it was painful to look at, like he was on some terrible acid trip. So we rushed him back and washed him in the stockroom sink (away from the food preparation area), but it’s tough for a cat to stay clean living in a deli. Generally, I favor deli cats, but I try not to look at them too hard.

What are essentials to having a well-stocked bodega? Everything starts with the lottery machine. The lottery machine changes the whole atmosphere of a store — visually (think of all the stickers with their optimistic/depressing slogans, or the torn-up scraps of paper lottery players leave behind), aurally (“Two! Six! Seven! Three!”) and most of all in terms of the mood. It’s a commitment to have a lottery machine. Some people hate it, but for others it’s like the Starbucks logo — they can sense one miles away, and when they find one it just puts them at ease.Your store will never stay empty for long if you have a lottery machine — just the opposite, in fact.

Other than lottery tickets, you need beer, of course. And cigarettes. And the Post and the News. There should be a lot of stuff that sits there and never gets sold and makes people wonder, “Who on earth buys that stuff?”

You ended up selling the deli. Why did you get out of the business? One of the things I noticed, the more time I spent with people in the deli business, is how many deli owners seem to have heart attacks in their forties and fifties. It’s a brutal profession. The profit margins are so slim and things can go wrong so fast — you’re constantly worrying. Plus, the people who are attracted to the business, or at least the ones who stay in it, are, I think, pretty intense in general. And then you constantly have things happening that make your blood boil — problem customers, deliverymen who don’t show up, surprise visits by inspectors. It’s bad for your health, on top of the crazy hours and total lack of vacations. This was the main reason we got out — the store was a well-meaning gift to my mother-in-law, but in the end not to her health.

Have you been back to visit the deli? Is it still owned by the person you sold it to? The store has changed hands a couple of times since we sold. The new owner is doing a better job than we did — I had one of his egg sandwiches the other morning, and came back two days later for another — but the store is different in subtle ways, not big ones. Some places have a life of their own. I’m sure that in twenty years after that neighborhood looks completely different and all the people who live there now have moved out, that store will still be there.

Are there any lessons that you take away from the experience? Anything you miss? Oh, I miss lots of things. At first I was terrified of that static, unchanging, tree-like existence standing at a cash register for the rest of your life, but of course it’s not boring at all — anybody can walk through the door of a New York convenience store, and anybody probably will. It’s good for the psyche too — they might not act like it in New York, but I think most shopkeepers actually like people.

Finally, any plans on opening another deli or starting another business with your family? None.