Almost anyone who lives in the neighborhood of Skyline and Cashill boulevards is familiar with Skyline Market, 2995 Skyline Blvd. Many wondered why this little store never seemed to live up to its potential, except in the quirkiness factor. Well, Bijan Rashidi and his wife, Heidi, wondered the same thing. They took over the building, completely gutted it, cleaned it up, and brought in artisan foods and a professional attitude. It’s now a full service community grocery store, constantly playing sports on the TV in the corner. Customers are welcome to sit down with the owners and take in a soccer game.
What’s your current job?
My current job is to open this store. It was my dream to open this store. My grandfather used to own a neighborhood store. I’m trying to do the same thing—for him to be proud of me, for the neighborhood to be proud of me and the store. It’s a complete store, with a mailroom, deli, and it’s the cleanest store you’ve ever seen in all the Reno area.
How did you come to be in this store? Seems like the guy in the store before was here 10 or 15 years.
The other gentleman was here for 17 years. I lived in this neighborhood for 21 years. My kid graduated from Reno High School. We came once to buy mix for making tacos, and we walked in here, and the place was very bad shape, and I told my wife, “You know, this has great potential,” and it was always my dream to open something like this. We got into the business in January of this year; it took us five months to repair everything and make it clean and brand new and to bring the public inside our store.
Well, it looks great. I see you have some gourmet type foods, what’s that all about?
We were in the gourmet business for seven years. We have our balsamic, they all come from Napa Valley, and we have different kinds of salad dressings, and mustards, and the gourmet wine in our gourmet section, and we have the raviolis, and we have 12 different kinds of pastas, flavored pastas. The company we deal with is the number one in the United States with 15 different kinds of orzos. An orzo is a new thing in the market; it’s a pasta cut in a football shape, and we have that, too, for people interested in that product.
And what’s the reaction been?
The reaction is everybody is surprised by how we’ve changed the whole thing. It’s clean here, it’s organized here, and they’re proud that we’re bringing in products from the local Reno area—from our vegetarian and vegan sandwiches to our fudges to our salsas. The artist who makes all our pictures lives just down the street from us. Our olives and our onions are all locally made, and that’s to make people proud. We’re proud to be small-business owners, and we’ve been trying to get the neighborhood to be proud of us and the store.