Under new ownership: Erie's Trawka's Market sold to Romanian chef with plans to expand

Meat has always been the star of the show at Trawka's Market on Erie's East Side.

Aside from the usual selection of steaks, chops and chicken, Trawka's, owned for 39 years by Tom Walsh, earned a reputation for selling endless loops of Polish, Italian and other sausages.

But Adrian Pop, a native of Transylvania, Romania, and the chef at the former Jr.'s Last Laugh Comedy Club for more than 20 years, saw potential that extended beyond the meat case.

Walsh had cultivated a following for his takeout lunch business, selling sandwiches and hot meals. Pop, who purchased the market at 712 Payne Ave., on Sept. 29, has continued that tradition since taking over.

Pop has been selling about 100 hot meals a day — including meatball sandwiches, city chicken and pork chops — and said customers call days in advance to find out what specials are planned for later in the week.

Those customers need not worry that their lunchtime ritual will be disrupted.

The takeout lunch business, and the opportunity to expand on it, was one of the things that caught Pop's attention as he looked for a business to buy.

During a recent tour of his small kitchen, Pop, who cooked at Jr.'s since 1999, said he will be adding a deep fryer, an industrial mixer and new ovens to help realize his vision.

"I am so excited, Pop said. "I can do dinners to go, I can do lunches. I just want to ramp it up and bring it up a little to 2023."

As he showed off his industrial smoker, Pop was clear about one thing: His idea of change is rooted in addition, not subtraction.

"Everything you see here, it's all going to stay," Pop said. That includes a cooler filled with sausage, homemade ox roast, Smith's hot dogs, and cabbage rolls, painstaking rolled one at a time.

But change already is under way.

Pop has added some European grocery items to the market's shelves and plans to introduce sausages native to his homeland. The Romanian potatoes that he made for years at Jr.'s might also make an appearance.

A culinary family

His wife, Nadia Pop, a baker and breakfast supervisor at Erie's Bayfront Sheraton, is also expected to play a role in the new business.

"She will be coming in here and working part-time, making sweet treats for us," he said.

Nadia Pop, 44, said she and her 43-year-old husband have been together since high school. Like him, she said she's excited to share the tastes of her childhood.

"This is something we have talked about for a lot of years since we have been together," she said.

She's not worried about offering customers something new along with the old favorites.

"If they try it they will fall in love with it," she said. "I hope they will keep responding the way they have been so far."

Pop and his wife aren't the only members of his family with culinary talent. His mother, Silvia Pop, who still lives in Romania, has been a chef since she was 18. His father, Alexandru Pop, who spent 20 months in prison during the communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, was the owner for a number of years of Erie's Majestic Bakery, which closed in 2019.

Adrian Pop, who has worked at both Jr.'s Last Laugh and The Sloppy Duck Saloon, has enjoyed some success. He's won local contests and watched in 2005 as participants in a charity fundraiser slurped down 22 gallons of his Romanian meatball soup, one four-ounce cup at a time.

But Pop always wanted what he refers to as a mom-and-pop place of his own, a kitchen where he could cook his own food.

But he will happily keep what works.

"I don't want to change that," he said. "There is too much history in that building and I don't want to let that go. I want to be the fourth generation that keeps it going."

A new generation takes over

Walsh, the longtime owner of Trawka's, sold the real estate for $125,000, according to a deed recorded at the Erie County Courthouse.

Although Pop paid an additional amount to purchase other aspects of the business, including the recipes, Walsh said he thinks the Pops are in a position to succeed.

"It's a great buy for him," he said.

Walsh, who had one of his legs amputated three years ago and had open-heart surgery earlier this year, decided at the age of 70 that it was time to get out of the grocery business.

"I believe the store needed a new face," he said. "I was so laid up the last three years it wasn't fair to my employees or to the customers. I couldn't do everything I was used to doing."

Walsh purchased the business in 1984 from Walter Trawka, who ran the market for more than 20 years, creating many of the sausage recipes still used today.

Walsh said he wishes Pop and his wife some of the same success he had during his own years as caretaker of the Erie landmark.

"The business was very good to me," Walsh said. "The people of Erie treated me great."

Pop feels the same way about some of the people and organizations who helped provide the money and expertise to purchase his business. They include Marquette Savings Bank, the Erie County Redevelopment Authority and the Gannon University Small Business Development Center.

Nadya Makay, a business consultant with the SBDC, said she feels good about the couple's chances for success after reviewing the market's financial records and making some projections about the future.

"You never know, but I think think they are going to do good," Makay said. "Passion is a huge thing behind a business's chance for success."

Adrian Pop, who became an American citizen in 2001, showed plenty of that in a statement provided to the Redevelopment Authority.

"It was time for me to fulfill my lifelong desire to establish and run my very own business," he said. "It is my mission and my passion to thrive in this area."

More: Tops Market closing raises food desert concerns in Erie

More: Erie's Flagship Public Market debuts as EDDC checks another goal off its list

Contact Jim Martin at jmartin@timesnews.com.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie couple are new owners of east side fixture Trawka's Market