DES DONNELLY, the ebullient greengrocer who traded as Roy Fox and made his shop a landmark in Donnybrook, Dublin, has died suddenly aged 59 from a heart attack.
For more than 50 years, the shop with its colourful display of fresh produce from all over the world has been bursting out of its premises up a side street adjoining the main street.
He spotted the rebirth of the dinner party and the revival of interest in cooking before most and made it his business to supply the fresh ingredients, which an increasingly sophisticated market demanded.
"Young couples come in with their cookery books and their shopping lists and they just love to find the ingredients and take them home and cook. People love to cook," he told food writer John McKenna in The Irish Times in July 1996.
The business started quite differently. In the early 1940s jobs were very scarce. A delivery man tipped off two young people in the grocery trade that a man called Roy Fox was opening a new shop in Donnybrook and there might be a chance of a job there.
Frank Donnelly and Sheila Harbourne, who then did not know each other, were taken on. Roy Fox died young, so Frank and Sheila took over the business as partners and later married.
Frank, too, died young and Des took over, working with his mother, in what was a traditional grocery shop, weighing pounds of sugar into bags, slicing ham and delivering large orders to cus- tomers. The domestic fridge was beginning to make its appearance but many women shopped every day, buying in small amounts in a process known as "getting the messages".
Ireland was changing though and nowhere was that change happening faster than Donnybrook, a few miles from Dublin's city centre. On December 31st, 1961, the new TV station began broadcasting from Montrose in Donnybrook. The vast campus of University College Dublin would join it later across the dual carriageway at Belfield. Further out of town at Stillorgan shopping centre and at Cornelscourt, Pat Quinn and Ben Dunne were about to change the face of Irish retailing, with their new-fangled supermarkets.
How much of that change Des Donnelly foresaw and how much was an instinctive response to what his customers were telling him is not known, but soon afterwards he made the most important decision of his business life.
He decided to concentrate on fresh produce, fruit and vegetables, anticipating the changes in taste of a more sophisticated customer base. He already had the bonus of having most of Dublin's embassy residences on his patch, he had listened when people asked him for produce he had never heard of. When the first consignment of peppers arrived in Donnybrook, nobody in the shop knew what to do with them until a foreign customer called in.
Some time in the 1970s, just three boxes of peppers were imported - one was for Roy Fox in Donnybrook and the others probably went to restaurants.
Journalist Marion Foster marvelled in The Irish Times in March 1986: "I saw mangoes from Peru at £1 each, nectarines from Chile for 35p, fresh dates from Israel at £1.50 per pound, Ugli fruit from Jamaica for 65p." She was also taken by the range of ogen melons, kumquats, bean sprouts, fennel and other delicacies, so she advised readers who wished to break new culinary ground to visit this latter day cornucopia in south Dublin.
Des Donnelly was a big man, given to rushing about, unloading vans, heaving boxes of produce on to shop front displays which threatened to spill out on to the main street. His daughter Joanne remembers her 21st birthday for an unusual reason. "It was the day we'd gone back into dry goods."
She and Des and the staff had been stacking shelves with lentils and brown rice and spices from the East until 10pm when her boyfriend put his foot down and insisted that her birthday be celebrated.
Des went every day to the city markets to see and buy fresh produce. In 2002, a flood in his warehouse, which destroyed stock and the company truck, hit the business very hard. It was a struggle to recover and he remembered the customers who stood by him at that time.
In recent years Des took up Tai Chi and explored a side of himself, which was spiritual rather than religious. He believed in healing and expressed his view thus: "You bring to you what is in your life."
He enjoyed his garden in Leopardstown and his pool full of goldfish. He was devastated when a firework accidentally landed in it blowing the fish out of the water, but he did what business people do, restocked and got on with it.
His daughter Joanne had worked with him since she left school and she has now taken over running the business.
His children Vicky, Joanne, Josh and Matthew survive him, as do his partner Ali Fisher and his brother John.
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Desmond Francis Donnelly, born October 7th, 1948; died July 3rd, 2008