Online Presence, Delivery Option on Deli's Menu

Copper Kettle Food & Deli has a lot to offer those who live and work in Green Brook. The store is staffed by friendly people, they make sandwiches and salads that are fresh and of high quality and sell pretty much any item normally found in a convenience store.

It’s also fair to mention that they do all of this despite a large, ongoing construction project on Greenbrook Road that severely restricts the amount of traffic that is able to enter and exit Sebring Plaza, where the store is located.

“We’re making ends meet but with the construction going on, it’s not even close to what it was before," said Brian Derkacz, co-owner of Copper Kettle Food & Deli. "We’re surviving, but there’s no way around something like that.

"You have to do what you have to do to drum up extra business,” he added.

Derkacz and fellow co-owner Isac Gomez have tried to do just that, including launching an Internet campaign as well as new, fresh sandwich ideas reminiscent of the “Grease Truck” sandwiches made famous at Rutgers University.

“One thing (we’ve done is), we started to deliver. The second thing is that we created a Facebook page and we invited a lot of people,” Gomez said. “Another thing we did is we changed the menu. Now we’re going to add different sandwiches, like for example, the grease truck sandwiches.”

The emphasis at Copper Kettle, which is unaffiliated with a Basking Ridge deli by the same name, has been on the food since Derkacz and Gomez bought the store from its previous owner and opened on Jan. 5, 2011.

“(The previous owner) primarily focused on lottery and cigarettes, for the most part. He had the deli back there, but he didn’t really have many meats back there and didn’t focus on it,” Derkacz said. “What we’re doing differently is we’re focusing mostly on the food right now. That’s where you make your money.”

That is a lesson both men have learned in their years in the delicatessen industry. The two met while working at a Hillsborough deli prior to opening Copper Kettle and learned there that customers take notice of high-quality food.

“With us it’s different; we’ve been in this business for 11 years. We know what we are doing, and that’s why we changed a lot,” Gomez said. “Again, we know what we are doing. Everything’s homemade, and everybody likes homemade.”

Coupled with that, though, is the friendly, relatable customer service that makes Copper Kettle continue to succeed despite nearby conditions.

“We are young and we like people,” Gomez said. “We have a lot of young people that really like us the way we are and, most importantly, the food.”

“We try to treat the customers as best we can, and I think that’s what’s keeping us afloat right now,” Derkacz added. “We have a lot of people that make a point in getting here, and we think that’s because of the way that we treat them and handle them. We do the best we can with what we have.”