In 1930, in Rua dos Bacalhoeiros, below the cathedral in Lisbon's Baixa, opened the Mercearia do Minho: beans, sausages, sweets, canned goods. Twelve years later, the shop was called Conserveira de Lisboa and sold almost exclusively canned fish.
One of the founding partners was a wholesale canner, hence the focus. Fernando da Silva Ferreira started as an employee and saved for so long that he was able to buy a third of the company. In 1942, the company received its current name, and that same year it registered its own brands. Three of them still exist today: Tricana, Prata do Mar and Minor. The rule of thumb in the shop is that Minor tends to carry the smaller fish from the south, while Tricana carries the larger ones from the north. Even there, they don't take it very seriously.
In the sixties and seventies, business was so good that two large warehouses were needed. Then the Portuguese canning industry collapsed: factories that were not modernized, the end of the colonial war, frozen food, and later supermarkets. One by one, businesses closed. Conserveira made it through because it owned the registered brands. It never had its own factory. The fish is canned where it lands: sardines in Matosinhos, tuna in the Azores.
When Fernando da Silva Ferreira wanted to retire in 1988, the shop was put up for sale. His son Armando and Armando's wife Regina took over half, and the other half went to a couple of friends; by 2004, the company belonged entirely to the two of them. After Armando's death in 2008, his children Tiago and Maria Manuel joined, the third generation.
The shop itself has changed little since the thirties. Portuguese pavement on the floor, wooden shelves up to the ceiling, the old counter, the office behind frosted glass, a massive cash register. The glass advertising signs with their slogans from the thirties have been restored. The only thing that has disappeared is the salt basin, where tuna used to lie, which was still sold loose back then. The city of Lisbon lists the business as a Loja com História.
“Era assim em 1930, quando a empresa nasceu, assim continua hoje." — It was like this in 1930, when the company was founded, and it is still like this today. That is how the company describes itself.
We stood inside it for the first time in January 2014. The shop is tiny: if five customers are inside, it is full, and you feel like a proverbial sardine in a can. Selma Santos, who takes care of exports, took a lot of time for us. In one corner, an employee sat wrapping the plain cans in printed wrapping paper, one for each brand. She manages about 600 a day with this. You can stand there and watch, and most people do.
Since then, Tricana has been on our shelves: sardines in olive oil, with lemon, with pepper, in tomato, mackerel fillets in seven varieties, tuna, and three varieties of Bacalhau. Twenty-one cans, all in our Tricana collection.
