‘You’re still here!’: The West End nut shop that has barely changed in 50 years​on February 22, 2025 at 2:10 am

During my long-ago student days when I lived in Hill End, my bus journey into town would take me past Mick’s Nuts, with its distinctive signage that looked like it hadn’t been updated since the place opened in 1972.

But one night, the signage changed.

The then-owners got a late-night call from the police.

“‘Mate, we’ve just caught some guy graffitiing your shop. But come down and have a look before we charge the guy, I’ve got a feeling you might like it.’”

The shop’s present co-owner, George Conias, loves retelling this story.

“He was just some local artist who thought he could do better than the Coke sign they had up. The owner comes down, sees it, and goes: ‘Mate, I’ll give you 100 bucks to finish the job.’”

The shop’s graffiti-style sign, with its peanut logo painted over the rusting Coca-Cola sign, remains on the shopfront to this day.

George, who runs Mick’s Nuts with his older brother Emmanuel, knows better than to mess with tradition.

“When we took over in 2014 we had customers who said, ‘Hey, good luck. Don’t change anything,’” he laughs.

“Every second person, it was: ‘Don’t change anything.’”

George Conias

West End has evolved over the past 50 years, from student dives to ritzy apartment blocks, from industrial to boutique, but the little shop on the corner of Vulture and Hardgrave has barely altered.

Mick’s Nuts has the same big bags of Macadamias, pine nuts, Brazil nuts, dried fruits and more cramming the shelves. Its fridges remain replete with tzatziki, taramasalata, fetta, hummus, cheeses and house-marinated olives.

Even some of the staff are the same. Helen Lagos has worked at the store for 26 years, 11 with the Conias brothers and 15 with original owners Mick and Mary Kallis.

“I sold my fish-and-chip store and I came and asked Mary if she had a job,” Lagos recalls.

She indicates a crate on the floor next to the fridge in the doorway.

“Mary’s father used to sit right there. We used to give him a nip of ouzo, and he used to suck sugared almonds.”

The late Bill Economidis made it well into his 100s watching the passing parade from that perch.

Employee Patty Samaras, meanwhile, is a relative newcomer, with only a decade at the shop under her belt.

“I used to work in Boundary Street at the newsagents, and there’s a lot of customers here that I know from there. Then you see their kids coming in, and now they have kids. You see everyone grow up, and it’s quite a community.”

On a Tuesday morning, the shop enjoys a steady stream of business. A cyclist in her helmet comes in requesting barley. Two elderly customers, delighted to see each other, embrace warmly.

Helen and Patty plunge shiny scoops into bags of organic produce and deposit it into paper bags and customers’ own jars.

Not everyone who stops by is a local. Chelmer resident Julie Lloyd has made a special trip.

“I do my own granola in the oven, and I get all the ingredients from here,” she explains.

“We just love the service and the quality, and it’s a family business, and probably the best nuts you’re going to find.”

Outside on the footpath, everyone who passes by seems to know George, from the dog walker to the tradie pulled up at the traffic lights beeping his horn. “His mum was one of my teachers,” the business owner says.

Sons of Greek parents – mother locally born, father an immigrant from Chios, the Aegean island famous for medicinal mastic gum – George and Emmanuel went to West End State School.

From the school’s tennis court they had a view of the 1939 block of stucco flats on the opposite corner, and its tiny shop that, since 1972, had been the home of Mick’s Nuts.

After graduating from Brisbane State High, 1500 metres further up Vulture Street, they worked in healthcare and in takeaways run by their parents.

“We’ve always been involved in fish-and-chip shops, snack bars – you know, stereotypical Greek stuff,” Emmanuel quips.

They were about to go in together on a snack bar in Yatala when they got a call from the Kallises. After 42 years, the family was ready to call it quits.

“I said, ‘I’m sorry, we’re buying another business on Monday,’ and he says: ‘just trial it for a few days, see what you think’. And that’s how it happened.

“They didn’t want to sell it to just any person who’s walking in the door,” Emmanuel says. “I mean, you have something for 40 years and you put your heart and soul into it, you want to keep that going.”

West End and South Brisbane welcomed many Greek immigrants after World War II, and it’s an essential part of the suburb’s character. Local landmarks include the Greek Club and the Greek Orthodox Church of St George, both in Edmondstone Street, while the annual Paniyiri Greek Festival takes place in Musgrave Park in May.

Mick’s Nuts has Greek identity stamped into it, but its clientele spans Greek, Lebanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Anglo.

“We have a lot of long-term customers,” George says. “Some move interstate and order online. They’ll come back 20 years later and go, ‘You’re still here!’.

So ingrained is Mick’s to the character of West End, a band called Vulture Street Tape Gang released an album titled Mick’s Nuts. Mick himself died in 2022, aged 91.

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George puts the shop’s longevity down to a number of factors. Those big bags of nuts on the shelves aren’t just for show.

“When you buy anything in a small packet it loses the flavour. When you get everything in bulk, it makes a big difference.”

Quality of staff is also important – as is quality of clientele.

“People don’t realise what a ‘family business’ means,” he says.

“It’s not just a family who owns a business. The staff become family, the customers become family. It’s the whole thing.”