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Mostly Cloudy Sea Cliff’s Arata’s Deli looking for new ownership
The Collura family is looking to sell Arata’s Deli, a Sea Cliff fixture since 1906. After over two decades of ownership, husband and wife Ron and Rachel Collura are looking to retire and, ideally, find a new owner to keep the deli serving the residents of Sea Cliff, Glen Head and Glenwood Landing.
The Colluras bought the business in 2003, although the family had worked in and owned delis in their hometown of East Rockaway since the 1980s. Arata’s has been in operation in Sea Cliff for over 100 years, and Ron Collura said that local delis have long been an important aspect of life on Long Island.
“When we first got married, I was working in a deli, back in the ’80s,” Collura said. “Back then, people would come in all the time to get cold cuts and meet up and chat, not just grab lunch.”
While the couple raised five children, Ron bounced between jobs as a carpenter and at a friend’s deli, and then he and Rachel bought a deli in East Rockaway in the early 1990s.
Several years later the couple expanded to a second location, whose owner had moved to Sea Cliff to take over Arata’s. They left the deli business for around a decade, but Ron ran a bread route operated by his sons, delivering fresh bread to customers and neighbors in East Rockaway.
Collura said it was his sons who came to him with the idea to buy Arata’s, which they had heard through their customers was for sale. While it was a difficult decision to move their business to the North Shore, Ron said, it finally gave them the chance to run a deli as a family.
“My sons had heard about Arata, and they came to me and said, ‘Why don’t you buy the deli?’” Collura recalled. “They all worked here while they were going to college, and it was a nice family business.”
Originally founded by the Arata family, the deli had been expanded over the years into a two-story operation. Collura made changes of his own in the middle and late 2010s, redoing the interior and using his skills as a carpenter to expand the storage space.
But as he and Rachel have gotten older, he said, Arata’s has been harder to manage. During the coronavirus pandemic, business came to a virtual standstill, as commuters in the village stayed home, although many loyal customers continued to call in and order food, which the Colluras delivered to them outside.
Rising produce prices during the pandemic, and inflation since then, have made their costs skyrocket, with essentials such as bread and eggs costing “an arm and a leg,” as Ron put it. Even with the pandemic over, he said, delis like Arata’s still haven’t recovered in some ways, because their business model has changed, with more people now going to supermarkets for their cold cuts and lunch necessities rather than delis.
And as the Colluras’ sons and daughter have grown up and thrived in their own careers, their father said, he and Rachel now do most of the work, and following health scares, they decided to retire to spend more time with their family.
“People have gotten out of the habit of stopping by on their way to the city,” Ron said. “They’re making coffee at home — they don’t leave the house. Maybe they’ll get Grubhub or one of those other apps to bring them food.”
He added that he and his wife are looking for new people to take over the deli, and that they have been approached by prospective owners who have discussed converting the space into a restaurant. He hopes it will remain a deli, and continue to serve the village as an eatery and a meeting place.
The best part of the deli business, he said, was getting to know many of the patrons, some of whom have become dear friends over the past two decades. Rose Baade, a customer for three years, said that the Colluras had helped keep Arata’s a part of the fabric of the community.
“It’s a great location, and we enjoy this place very much,” Baade said. “We built a whole group of friendships over the years. It’s like ‘Cheers’ in here.”
